The continuation of What may come to pass
by Gaia 479
Summary: This is the story that was originally intended to be a dream while Booth was in a Coma, but I have decided that an 'alternate reality' is better! Part two ends... Disclaimer: Bones belongs to it's original Creators. It's their clay, but my mold.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One What is coming to pass?

Booth had heard her screams from the second his car pulled up outside the ware house. His heart was racing faster than his feet. He tried the first door he came to. It was locked. Without pausing, or thinking of another plan, he pulled out his gun and fired at the lock. It flew into pieces and he kicked the door open, his weapon still drawn. He scanned the immediate interior of the doorway, and seeing no one, or nothing, he continued further. He could still hear her screams. He let himself be led to where they were coming from.

He came to a set of stairs, and something caught his peripheral vision on the right. It was a SWAT team member who signalled at him to keep going. He went down the stairs, and was immediately followed by about fifteen FBI agents, all dressed in vests and helmets and ready to shoot. Her screams still sounded, but they were becoming hoarse, and suddenly they stopped. The next sound he heard broke his heart into pieces. It was a baby's cry. He came to the room that the cries were coming from. The door was locked.

As he paused, before storming the door, he heard footsteps running to the other side of the room. The baby's cries were fading away as the perpetrator ran. He turned back to the SWAT team member behind him and yelled,

"There's another door!!! He's going out the back." His eyes blazed, the SWAT members shook at the tone in his voice. "THAT sonovabitch has MY KID! Get him!!!"

Half the team ran down the hallway, trying to cut off the bastard at the back, a few of them went back the way they had come, and a few remained with Booth. He shouldered the door open, ready to fire.

The room was quite a bit bigger than he thought, from the other side all he saw was another door slamming shut. He was seconds too late. He looked down, towards the centre of the room, and he knew he had to trust the other guys to get the man. His eyes were glued, in shock, to what he saw.

His wife lay in a pool of blood. There was a hunting knife just to the left of her. Her body was writhing. The child had been cut out of her. One of the SWAT team to his left actually vomited, he ignored it and ran to her side,

"Tempe, honey, talk to me." He was afraid to touch her, there was so much blood. He heard one of the other FBI agents on his radio, calling for the ambulance guys to get down there, and fast.

Her eyes were barely focused and she struggled to say the words that he heard.

"Booth?" She reached her hand towards him, "He took the baby!" Her words were weak and raspy.

"Just hold on, help is here." He held her hand.

He was already covered in her blood. She was fading fast. She had to be when that much of her blood was on the outside. He had no idea how she was even still conscious. Her eyes showed so much pain, that for the first time he could think of, he couldn't look at them. He looked over his shoulder and saw the ambulance personal entering the room. He stood up and yelled at them to hurry.

She was fading fast.

They loaded her quickly onto the gurney and were covering her as fast as they could with absorbent bandages. They had her up the stairs in under a minute, and as they loaded her into the bus, Booth noticed a helicopter flying away in the distance, very fast. He caught one last look at the mother of his child before they shut the doors. She was white. His eyes closed momentarily in pain, and he slapped the door twice, signalling to ambulance to go.

The Leader of the SWAT team approached him slowly.

"Where's my kid?" He asked his voice full of pain and anxiety. The SWAT guy shook his head,

"They got to the helicopter before we could catch them. They were planning for this. They were very well prepared!"

"They had a GOD DamN HELICOPTER?" Booth screamed. "WHO the HELL are these guys??"

"We've called for backup! There are two air force helicopters heading it off as we speak."

Booth momentarily had control of his anger, and a look of ultimate pain came across his face.

"They know there's a child on board right. They know not to shoot it down right!" Booth had grabbed the man to whom he was speaking and shook him roughly by the shoulders.

"They know Agent Booth; it's an intercept mission, not a take down." The Agent pulled away from the distraught man, and walked back towards his team to plan out the next phase.

Booth took one last look at the helicopter, just a spot on the horizon now, and ran for his car. He had caught up with the ambulance in a few blocks, and followed it, with lights blazing and sirens blaring to the hospital. He was swearing and cursing the whole way. Some of the words had not been used since his army days. They arrived at the hospital faster than he thought possible.

This was not how the birth of his and Bone's child was supposed to take place. The wading pool sat on their living room floor waiting for the pre-planned water birth. The midwife was on speed dial, the bassinet was close by. Also on speed dial was the number of the hospital, he had added that without her knowledge, just in case something went wrong. This was not that something. This was so wrong. Her being sliced open on the cold, concrete floor of an abandoned warehouse never even crossed his mind. He felt a little nauseous himself.

He wondered at that moment if he should have heeded Doctor Wyatt's advice all those months ago, that their careers were much too unstable for child rearing and one of them, at least, should back down. It should have been her, he thought, and was instantly sorry for his thoughts. This was not her fault. No way in hell it was her fault.

He pulled in behind the ambulance and got out of the vehicle, running towards his wife, who was being wheeled in into the building. Someone yelled at him that he couldn't park there, but he ignored them and raced after the stretcher. He grabbed one of the ambulance attendants by the arm and asked him what was going on. How was she?

"She needs to go right to surgery, they need to stop the bleeding, her heart has stopped twice already and she's losing blood as fast as we can get it into her." The paramedic stopped him as he tried to get in the elevator with them.

"You have to wait down here."

"Just do whatever you have to do to save her! Our baby is going to need it's mother." It dawned on him that he didn't even know if the baby was a boy or a girl. This was so not part of the plan.

"That's our plan sir, now if you will step aside, we need to go." Booth was standing in the elevator doorway, and the door would not close while he was there. He stepped back, and took a quick glance at his wife as the doors closed.

"I'm right here Bones! Just where I've always been!" He called into the closing doors. The medical personal in the elevator looked at him with pity, and he noticed their looks. Tears finally came to his eyes. He put his fist through the wall, just outside the elevator doors.

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On the helicopter, flying away from the warehouse, two men strapped themselves into the seats, each taking turns holding the newborn infant while the other secured the safety belt and donned headsets.

"That was close man, they almost had me." One man said, wrapping the baby tighter in the towel that had been waiting for them in the helicopter. The infant shivered, but didn't cry.

"You took too long, you should have just killed her and been done with it. Knowing you, you had to toy with her a little bit."

"Yeah, I never thought that Agent Booth would figure out so quickly where she was."

"Well, don't ever underestimate that man. I hate to say it. But he's good." He held the infant up to his face. "You hear that Junior, your Daddy is a very perceptive FBI Agent... Just a little bit too late to save your Mommy though."

Both men laughed. The pilot informed them that they were approaching the coordinates. The helicopter set down ever so briefly in an empty lot, and the two men with the child ran for the van that was waiting at the edge of the parking lot. The helicopter was back up in the air and continuing its previous flight path. The men noticed immediately that two Chinook helicopters were on an intercept course, they were still ahead of the heat. Just barely.

As they got into the van, they saw the explosion in the air. The detonation they had set before exiting the flying machine went off just as they had planned. The pilot never knew their plan, he had been well paid for his efforts, but they never intended for him to enjoy the rewards.

The woman driving the van looked quickly in the backseat, especially at the baby.

"We good?" She asked the two men,

"Yeah, let's go." One of the men pushed his counterpart out of the open door as they started to move and without hesitation, unloaded three shots into the man's head. He was dead before he hit the ground.

The van door shut and it drove away quickly. The three remaining occupants were heading for their next vehicle, parked only a few blocks away. Their plan was unfolding nicely. The baby cried.

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Agent Booth paced nervously around the waiting room. Waiting for word on either situation that was tearing his heart in two. He knew that most expectant fathers did some pacing as they waited, but he was pretty sure that this situation had never before been the cause of the nervousness. What was taking so long?

He finally noticed two army personal heading towards him, their hats tucked under their arms and their faces stoic. Oh crap.

"Did you find them? Do you have our baby?" His eyes went back and forth between them, waiting for them to say something, anything.

"Special Agent Booth," the first officer finally spoke, "Perhaps you would like to sit down." That could not mean good news. He sat down in the chair beside him.

"We are afraid that we have to inform you that the helicopter containing your and Doctor Brennan's child exploded and went down in a residential neighbourhood just on the edge of D.C."

Booth had his elbows on his knees and his hands on his face. The officers waited for some kind of reaction. He finally looked up at them, pain in his eyes.

"They weren't supposed to shoot it down. They knew it had the baby on board!" His distraught mind went back to the conversation he and his wife had about the window placard that Bones had insisted they place in the window of their car. Baby on Board. It as yellow and diamond shaped; he remembered her pride when it was finally attached to the rear window.

"They didn't shoot it sir, the helicopter exploded. It must have been rigged with an explosive."

Booth looked at both of them; they could see the wheels turning in his head,

"Why would they go to so much effort to get the baby, and then blow themselves up? It doesn't make any sense."

"No sir, it doesn't. We have ground crews scouring the wreckage right now; we'll let you know what we find."

"You do that." Seeley walked away from them.

He refused to believe that their baby was dead. How could that little miracle, who had dominated their thoughts for the last eight months, be gone just like that? It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. He looked up and saw a doctor approaching him. When the doctor was close enough to him he looked the FBI Agent in the eye and he said,

"Agent Booth, My name is Doctor Weaver, and I am in charge of your wife..."


	2. Let's go back

Chapter Two: Six months earlier.

Brennan was examining some remains on the platform of the Jeffersonian. She was deep in thought and didn't see or hear her partner approach quietly behind her. Angela saw him coming, but did nothing to alert her friend. She loved to see this new relationship between them. He grabbed her by the waist and spun her around to surprise her. He was very surprised when she pushed him back and promptly vomited on his shoes.

"Whoa, sorry there Bones, I didn't even think." He leaned down to place his hand on her back, she was still bent over.

"It's okay Seeley; I've just been a little nauseous this morning. You couldn't have known." She stood up and revealed her positively green pallor to the two who stood near her. Angela looked shocked.

"Are you okay Sweetie, you don't look very good?" The artist was having suspicions as to why Brennan had just thrown up.

"I think that I might need to lie down for a minute, if my 'boyfriend' here will accompany me." Booth, looking incredibly guilty, guided her down the steps and helped her to her office.

They passed Cam and Hodgins on the stairs, but Booth waved away their questioning looks. The Squints continued up to where Angela was standing, looking at her now for an explanation. She just shrugged, and diverted Hodgins away from where Brennan's breakfast lay on the floor.

"Brennan just totally threw up all over Booth." She was laughing as she said it.

"Wow," Cam looked surprised, "I've never seen Doctor Brennan even flinch before at anything decomposing. Do you think...?"

Hodgins was following the conversation, and even he caught on to the implications of Cam's unfinished question. He looked at the ladies and smirked,

"I always thought you and I would be the first to have kids. Boy are they in trouble." He looked at Angela.

"Why would they be in trouble?" Cam asked him, "They're two consenting adults, involved in a relationship; I think it would be good for Doctor Brennan to settle down a bit."

"No, I just mean that if their kid gets his looks and her brains, it's going to be a heartbreaker. They are in trouble!"

The three of them laughed, and Angela stopped a passing janitor to ask if he could come and clean up the mess.

In her office, Seeley guided her to her couch and helped her lay down. He sat beside where she lay and tenderly stroked her forehead. Color was returning to her face, and eventually she smiled at him.

"I told you everything happens eventually Bones." He smirked at her.

"What?" She had no idea what he was talking about.

"A long time ago, we had a conversation where you said that you never vomit, and I told you that everything happens eventually. Turns out I was right." He gave her a knowing look.

"Well, looks like you were right this time. I think, in all fairness, that I have a pretty good excuse for what happened."

"You have a very good excuse." He smiled warmly and put his hand on her abdomen, which was starting to round nicely. He looked back at the platform, where all the squints were looking in their direction.

"I think our little secret is out though."

She put hers hands on his, and smiled,

"Our 'little' secret wasn't going to stay little forever. I was going to start to show eventually." She tried to smile at him, but nausea was making itself known again.

He was looking back at the squint squad and he noticed Doctor Sweets was leaning on the railing, talking to the people on the platform. His head turned in their direction repeatedly and eventually he started making his way towards them.

"We've got company, are you ready for this?" He looked at her face for any signs of panic. There were none. "Sweets is coming."

"Dammit." Was all she said.

Sweets stood in the doorway with a shocked expression on his face. It was a minute before he said anything.

"Hey, are congratulations in order?" His boyish face looked hopeful. Brennan sat up on the couch to face him.

"Are you offering them?" Booth could have sworn there was sarcasm in her voice. His grin was lighting up the room.

"Of course I am. I find it a little surprising though, considering Doctor Brennan's opinion on child-bearing though. What changed your mind?"

"I got pregnant. That changed it very quickly." Booth laughed out loud at her comment. Sweets just shook his head.

"How far along are you?"

"Just over three months. Everything is progressing as it should be." Booth put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. She was becoming more comfortable with his public displays of affection all the time. He was thrilled by her progress.

They could both see Sweets doing the math in his head.

"That means your first month of pregnancy was happening while Booth was in the Coma?"

"Well, I didn't know I was pregnant at the time, but yes, I guess that would add up." She got up and walked towards her desk.

"How do you guys feel about this turn of events?" He really wanted to know.

"It's our little miracle, conceived in a dream." Booth answered the question with a sparkle in his eye, directed at his partner. She smiled warmly at him. She was still a little green.

Sweets didn't really know what that meant, but he was pleased that the two of them seemed happy with the situation. This was a very unexpected turn of events in their relationship. He was very happy for them.

"Can I give you a hug Doctor Brennan?" Booth had stood up and walked to her side. She looked up at him before she answered,

"Sure."

He hugged her affectionately, and when he released her, he looked at the tall FBI agent, his arms outstretched. Booth shook his head, and crossed his arms.

"Not going to happen Sweets. Don't even try." Brennan laughed out loud.

They let Sweets know, that they had somewhere to be, and quickly took their leave of his presence. They were stopped by all the squints in the lab, who wanted confirmation of their suspicions. They told the truth and were rewarded by hugs and kisses from everyone. Most of them received by Brennan, Booth just smiled proudly. Everyone was thrilled for them. They had been through so much in the last months, with Booth's brain injury and recovery that everyone was delighted that finally, some good news was out there.

They walked into the diner to discover that their appointment was already there waiting for them. The tall, British Doctor stood up to greet them, and shook both of their hands before settling back down, his cup of coffee already half gone.

"Hello Gordon, Gordon. Hope we didn't keep you waiting, we were slightly detained by the crowd of well-wishers at the lab." Brennan slapped his arm,

"Booth will you stop calling him that, I'm sure he doesn't appreciate it." Booth waited until Brennan had sat down, before he followed. He smiled at her.

"I really don't mind Doctor Brennan, it's sort of an," he paused making a rolling gesture with his hand, "Let's say...inside joke between us... a sign of our mutual respect, if you will. Now, what's this about well-wishing?"

They were briefly interrupted by the waitress taking their order. He ordered pie and coffee; she ordered dry toast and green tea. Booth put his arm around the back of her chair, and she leaned into it.

"Our secret has been discovered." Booth smiled at him from across the table.

"Well, it seems I lost the bet. You did manage to keep it secret for longer than I expected. I suppose lunch is on me then." His accent played across the table. "How are you feeling about impending parenthood now that everyone knows?"

"We're still thrilled. Aren't we?" Booth looked at his partner. She nodded at him, and then at Doctor Wyatt.

"Now," the Doctor continued, "Does this change anything about what we spoke about last time? Do you still have fears about what it could mean when you are both working a case, and the little one waits for you at home."

Brennan confided further to both of them, that her fears of something happening to one or both of them while working a case where still very strong. Having been left an orphan herself, she worried greatly that her child may be faced with the same scenario that had played out for her.

Doctor Wyatt and Booth both tried to convince her that you could not anticipate every circumstance that might happen, especially when it came to children. There was no book that described how to deal with day to day happenings, and sometimes you just had to accept that things were going to happen that were beyond your control. Booth told her the story about how once, Parker had fallen off a slide, and broken his arm, and he spent the whole night crying, worried that he was a bad father. She returned his sentiment with a kiss on the cheek, and the comeback, that he was very, very good father to Parker, as she was sure he would be with their child.

She seemed to understand what they were saying, but neither of the men was sure if her fears had been completely dissuaded. They would keep working on her. She had come a long way in only a few short months. Baby steps, Booth thought to himself. Then he laughed to himself at his pun.

Both of his lunch companions looked at him, and he waved off their confused looks. He didn't feel the need to share his little joke.

The Doctor went on,

"Now, have either of you considered a change in career, if these fears of Doctor Brennan's continue to dominate her thoughts?"

The partners went into an hour long, sometimes heated explanation as to why they did the jobs they did. How they made the world a better place. Doctor Wyatt listened with interest, making notes in his head about things they each said, to bring up a later date. Despite the fact that he had 'retired' from being a professional psychologist, these two interested him greatly. It was worth the time not spent in his patio garden to help them with their problems. Such as they were.

Their session was ended by the ringing of Booth's cell phone. He stood up from the table, and wandered away to take the call.

When he came back, he apologized to the kind Doctor that they had to go. A body had been discovered. They both thanked him for his time, and after Booth had helped her with her jacket, they left the diner, hand in hand, and headed for their car. The Doctor smiled to himself, paid the bill, and headed home, thinking that barbeque would be nice for dinner.

In the car, on the way to the crime scene, Brennan was getting slightly annoyed at Booth's repeated questions as to whether or not she was feeling up to the case. He had been warned that it was a nasty one. She informed him, that women had been having babies since the beginning of time, and it was no excuse to be negligent of her duties. He finally let it go, but continued to glance at her with a concerned look on his face.

When they got to the crime scene, it turned out the body had been dumped in a farmer's field, and the farmer had driven over it with his thresher. Body parts were everywhere, chopped into fine little pieces. They got to within 10 feet of the scene, and Brennan started to heave. She leaned over and lost her lunch. The FBI medical examiner, that they worked with on a regular basis covered a smile with his hand, but couldn't help his comment, knowing of their relationship,

"What's the matter Agent Booth, did you knock her up or something?"

Booth gave him a murderous glare, and bent over his partner, rubbing her back while she continued to vomit. When it seemed that she was finished, she stood up and looked at the examiner who was still watching the two,

"That's a distasteful way of putting it." She looked up at Booth, ignoring the shocked look on the other man's face, and added,

"It would seem that I am not in full control of my hormones." Booth kept rubbing her back, as they walked back to the car.


	3. Moving forward

Chapter Three

Booth awoke in the middle of the night. He had another nightmare. This one involved a baby, a three foot high murderous smurf and him trying to defend himself and the child with only a sock filled with oatmeal. His dreams had been strange lately for sure. He left the bed and made his way to the bathroom. He took a few minutes to splash cold water on his face and when he looked in the mirror, he noticed the dark circles under his eyes. He had not had much sleep lately, but he was not upset about that fact.

He stood in the doorway of the bathroom, and stared at the bed. Dawn was pushing light into the room, and he saw her form becoming more visible as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. She was naked, a by-product of the fact they had made amazing love into the early hours. Now she lay there, sleeping soundly, unaware of his stares. He could not get enough of her body, her kisses, and her gentle affectionate touches that she surprised him with daily. Now, her slightly protruding stomach made his heart leap. The unexpected little being that made him feel whole again. He wasn't sure he remembered exactly the events of the conception, but he wouldn't change anything about it. They had done something right.

He didn't know what changed her mind about having a child; her explanation was that once she suspected she was pregnant, she discovered she was actually thrilled about it. He had been in a coma at the time, and was so sorry that he had not been there to support her through the life changing discovery. He was there now though, and there was no way he was going anywhere. He wanted to be there through every stage of development. He had missed so much with Parker. He had no idea until now.

Bones seemed to understand this, and encouraged him to be there. In so many ways. He wasn't sure what made her so understanding of his need to be involved, but he suspected it had something to do with his grandfather. She had told him that the old man had really supported her through his incapacitation, and whatever he had said to her, he definitely owed his grandfather a drink, or a car, or a house. He owed him big anyway. Now, if only he could convince her that he wanted to be there for her every day, for the rest of his life. The ring he had purchased a week earlier lay secretly tucked in his jacket pocket, waiting for the right moment. He wouldn't push the commitment thing yet. Baby steps. He smiled to himself.

He looked at the clock. It was five thirty. She would be waking up soon. Her morning sickness had kicked in hard in the last couple of days, and he sympathized so badly. It had humiliated her the other day, when she threw up at the crime scene. All the medical examiners had teased her mercilessly, and when he went to talk to them, she had stopped him and told him to quit being so protective. He couldn't help it. It was just how he was. This woman was carrying his child. Wasn't he allowed to be? He made his way to her kitchen, and found her stash of crackers. He put some of them on a plate and brewed a cup of weak tea for her, knowing this had been her morning habit for the last few days. It seemed to help with the nausea. He carried them both back to the bedroom and noticed she had started to stir.

The sheet that had partially covered her had been kicked off in the last few minutes while he had been gone. He felt a stirring in himself, and setting down the tea and crackers, sat beside her on the bed. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. Then he kissed her nose, and followed her jaw line down her shoulder. She had woken up fully by this point, and pulled his head back up to hers to kiss him soundly on the lips. His hand caressed her back and her hip, moving down to her thigh. Suddenly she shot straight up, her hand flew to her mouth, and her feet flew to the bathroom. He sighed, grabbed the cup of tea and followed her to the bathroom, where she tried not embarrass her pride. He wrapped her in a robe, and sat beside her until she felt better. He loved every minute of it.

Later that morning, Temperance sat in her office, pretending to be occupied. Mostly that had been to convince Sweets that she was too busy to speak with him. He was getting harder and harder to avoid. He had no idea that her and Booth had been meeting with Doctor Gordon Wyatt three times a week since Booth had regained consciousness in the hospital. For some reason, they both, especially Booth, trusted the older, British Doctor more than the young FBI Psychologist. Booth had almost a hero worship for the man, and Brennan admitted to herself that he was a great help to this unexpected situation that they were both in. She felt very comfortable with him. She was lazily typing on the keyboard when her best friend came into her office, and without a word, sat down on the chair opposite her. Angela waited until her friend looked up before she spoke.

"So, how are we doing today?" Angela tried to keep the smile off of her face, but she failed.

"I seem to be excreting copious amounts of human chorionic gonadotropin and estrogen, and apparently that is causing severe olfaction, which in turn," she paused ever so briefly, "Is causing my pharyngeal reflex to over-react."

"What now?" Angela just looked confused, though she had caught some of the terms, and their meanings. "Tell me in English!"

"My sense of smell is incredibly well defined today and it's causing me to be very nauseous." Brennan was suddenly feeling very tired and tried to stifle a yawn.

"Is that why Wendell is up there working with Cam and Hodgins trying to identify the guy who was dumped in the farmer's field?" Angela noticed for the first time that her friend looked very tired.

"Yes. It's frustrating Ange, I've never felt like this before. I am not completely in control of myself, and it's very unsettling for me. Women have been having children since the beginning of time and it should not be an excuse to not be able to do one's job."

"Not everyone deals with human remains on a daily basis Sweetie. It's an extreme situation to deal with. Don't worry you'll come around. It's only temporary." She smiled at her friend and was distracted by Booth coming into the room. He swept up to the desk, and winked at Angela.

"Hello beautiful..." He waited until his partner looked up at him, and kissed her on the lips, "...and hello to you too." He smiled from his soul into her eyes.

Angela busted out laughing. Brennan rolled her eyes. He looked at the artist next, with a smile.

"What are you guys talking about?"

"Brennan here was just telling me about how amazing you are in bed." The FBI Agent's smile faded a bit, and he started to turn a vivid shade of crimson. He looked back at his partner with just a hint of panic in his eye. Brennan stared at her friend with an annoyed look.

"Booth, no we weren't, but in all honesty, you have nothing to be shy about." Now she smiled at her friend, who was still laughing.

"I am going to check on the progress of identifying our body out there... and leave before you both jump me!" The two ladies continued their laughter as he left her office, heading for the platform. Angela smiled at her friend,

"Seriously though, how is he?"

Brennan rolled her eyes again, pretending to work on her computer. They made plans to meet for lunch later that day.

That evening, Brennan was alone in her apartment. Booth was with Parker and they had both decided that in the meantime, it would be best if he and his son stayed at his own place. It would provide a more stable environment for the boy. As fast as their relationship had progressed, Parker was still his firstborn and Booth didn't want his son to think that he was replacing him with the new baby. Parker was thrilled that he was going to be a big brother and very happy that his father still had all the time in the world for him.

She was tidying up her bedroom, which she had been neglecting lately; the reason brought a smile to her lips and warmth to her insides, and she went to move one of Seeley's jackets that had been carelessly tossed on her dresser. She noticed something fall out of the pocket and roll under the dresser. Her heart skipped when she pulled the item out from where it had landed.

It was a small black velvet box. This could only mean one thing. She opened the box to reveal a thin silver band with a small diamond surrounded on each side by two small sapphires. It was beautiful. She couldn't help herself; she pulled it out of the cushion and laid it in the palm of her hand. It was beautiful, elegant and so completely her. Tears came to her eyes. She tried it on the third finger of her left hand; it was a perfect fit. How did he know? She knelt there on her bedroom floor for who knows how long, tears streaming down her face, until she was distracted by the phone ringing. She took the ring off and put it back in the box. She answered the phone.

It was Booth's grandfather. He was calling to check in on the progress of his soon to be newest great-grandchild. They spoke for some time about how she was feeling and how everything was working out between her and Seeley. Everything was wonderful. She couldn't help but tell him about the ring. The grandfather reminded her again about Seeley's fear of rejection, and her lack of desire to get married. The two problems did not complement each other very well. She agreed. The grandfather went on again about how happy Seeley had seemed since their feelings had been spoken aloud, and how ecstatic he was about the child growing within her. He advised her to be patient, and really think about what her saying yes to his proposal would mean to him. It would mean everything. She agreed again. This old man who knew his grandson so well, again, opened her mind to the true, wonderful man that Seeley Booth was. She didn't need much convincing on that point. She ended the call with the promise that she would think hard about the forthcoming proposal, and keep him posted on the progress.

When the call was ended, her phone rang almost immediately with a call from Booth. He was just checking up on her; asked her how she was feeling. He noticed she seemed distracted, but could get no reason from her. He chalked it up to hormones. They said their goodnights, Parker came on the phone and said goodnight as well. She was touched that his son made the effort to include her.

After she had hung up the phone, she sat on the edge of the bed, with the velvet box in her hand, thinking about the dilemma she faced. Stand by her convictions, or make the man she loved happier than he already was. It was a tough one. An idea started to formulate in her head, and she reached for the phone to call her best friend.

When the phone was answered on the other end, she found herself saying,

"Angela, do you know how to bake a pie?"

The artist was confused.


	4. Brennan comes around

Chapter Four

A week passed before Temperance got to put her plan into action. She hoped with every inch of her being that every evening that she and Booth were together, that this would not be the night that he decided to propose. She kept bringing up how she never wanted to get married, never wanted to be involved in the archaic ritual of matrimony; how she was completely happy the way they were. Every time she said it, she saw his mood drop. She kept her smiles hidden at his reaction and she made it up to him at night.

They spent the morning at a Doctor's office getting the first ultrasound of their child. They were awestruck at the images on the monitor, and they both cried. He swore her to secrecy at his reaction; after all, he had a tough guy image to uphold. He was surprised when the doctor asked if they wanted to know the sex of the baby and she immediately said no. As they walked out to the car after the appointment, he teased her and asked her why? Wouldn't she want to plan everything from the name, to the color scheme of the nursery? She smiled at him and said,

"Sometimes surprises are nice." To which he wholeheartedly agreed. He assumed her broad smile had something to do with the baby.

On their way to the Jeffersonian, they discussed the current case that they were involved in. The case that had caused her so much difficulty with her humility. There was still no identification of the body. She was spending her time trying to piece the skull back together, having an easier time dealing with the remains once all the flesh was gone. Hodgins was having a field day, as they had separated over one hundred types of particulate matter in the immediate area of the body dump and fragmentation. Angela was waiting on Bones to reassemble the skull to create a composite sketch. Despite the fact that her passion for identifying the victims, giving them back their humanity, had not waned; she no longer had the desire to spend the entire night in the lab like she used to. She now had something to go home to every night. Well, almost every night. The odd night he spent with his son at his own apartment was a small price to pay for her true happiness. Such as it was so far.

As they walked into the lab, Brennan shot Angela the pre-determined signal that the plan was on. The artist caught it instantly and approached the two as they were passing the platform.

"Hey Brennan. Hey Booth." She said it very casually. "How was the appointment?"

"It was very informative." Brennan also tried to be casual.

"Everything is just fine with Junior here." Booth held his hand on her abdomen, and had a look on his face that defied description.

"Say Booth..." Temperance looked at him, avoiding Angela's eye, "I'm suddenly not feeling very well, Angela, do you mind driving me home." She looked back at her friend. She was such a bad liar, she was sure he would catch on.

He looked nervous, and insisted that he could drive her home, but she told him he had work to do on the case. She told him he should go see Hodgins and see if he had found anything new, and that she was just fine, she just needed to rest. He still looked anxious when she kissed his cheek and left the lab with her best friend. He stared at the door through which she had left, for awhile, and then went to find the bug guy.

Angela and Brennan drove over to Booth's apartment. They discussed on the way their strategy for finding the ring. Knowing he was a 'Special Agent', they assumed the ring would be well hidden. They decide to split up and grid the apartment. Brennan taking the back and Angela taking the front.

They let themselves in using Booth's 'hidden' key. Temperance headed for his bedroom, making a mental note to herself to remind him that the key wasn't really hidden. That fake rock still wasn't fooling anybody. Angela headed for the kitchen. In less than a minute Angela called to her,

"Bren! I found it!"

"That was fast." Brennan headed into the kitchen to see Angela smiling and pointing at the counter. There it sat. Out in the open. She picked it up and slipped it in her pocket and headed for the door.

They both laughed all the way back to her apartment with Angela's comment,

"Sweetie, we are so CIA material it isn't even funny."

Angela helped her bake the ring into an apple pie. Brennan was amazed at her friend's knowledge of pastry as she watched the process. Knowing Booth's love of pie, she would remember this for future manipulative considerations. The pie was baking in the oven, and Brennan started to prepare the rest of the dinner she had planned. Angela lingered for awhile. Temperance was thankful for the company, as she was getting very, very nervous.

"Are you sure about this Sweetie? It's a really big step. Everyone knows your opinion on marriage; you've made it pretty clear over the years."

"Well, I think that I am totally sure, but obviously this is something that Booth really, really wants. I will do whatever I can to make him happy now. I love him. I am willing to give him something that he wants and it's not as though it's inconveniencing me. It's just a piece of paper right?" Her rationalization astounded Angela. This selfless act was a step beyond how far she ever thought her friend would go in regards to Booth. She was proud. Brennan continued,

"I mean, he'll always be there for the baby and me... I know that, and this will let him know that I know that. I think it makes sense. Doesn't it?" Brennan didn't sound quite as confident as she hoped she did.

"This will make his life Sweetie. It's everything he ever wanted from you, in one happy little package." She went to give her friend a hug, and rubbed her stomach gently before she did. "I'm so happy for you."

"Thanks Ange. I couldn't have done it without you," the two hugged in the kitchen, "and I don't mean just tonight either."

"Just call me cupid." Angela started to put her coat on, ignoring Brennan's confused look at her comment. She kissed her on the cheek and made her way to the door, Brennan followed.

"Call me later. Tell me how it went."

"I'll call you tomorrow." Brennan now had confidence in her voice that implied that she would be very preoccupied tonight. Angela left with a wink and a knowing smile.

She spent the next hour preparing the romantic dinner, setting the table, lighting candles. Readying herself for what she was about to do. Booth called her, asking if she was alright, asking about the baby, and let her know that he was on his way. Her nerves were definitely on the surface.

She was in the kitchen when she heard him turning the key in the door. Her heart was pounding.

He dropped his coat in the living room and walked into the kitchen to greet her with a big smile.

"You're obviously feeling better. What's this all about?" He wrapped his arms around her, bringing her close to him.

"I'm feeling puckish I guess." She kissed him very slowly on the lips. They swayed together for awhile, when something caught his eye.

"Did you bake me a pie?" His voice sounded thrilled. "Did I ever tell you how much I love you?"

"It's come up once or twice. Sweet's told me once that your attempts to get me to eat pie could be considered a form of seduction, so..." She left the statement unfinished. He was clever enough to catch her meaning.

"Consider me seduced!" He nuzzled her neck, his hands running down her back, untucking her shirt. His fingers found the soft skin of her lower back. She grabbed his hands and stepped back a little. His lips pulled away from her neck. Their eyes connected and sparkled into each other. She broke the gaze first.

"We should eat while it's still hot." She kissed him once more and stepped away from his arms. He flashed her his amazing smile, the one that shone through his eyes and revealed his dimples and said,

"Oh it's hot!"

She smiled at him over her shoulder as she removed dishes from the oven.

The dinner she had prepared amazed him beyond words. They held hands whenever they could, and every time she got up to get something from the counter, she grazed her lips across the back of his neck, blowing gently, knowing that turned him on more than anything else.

It came time for dessert. He waited eagerly while she scooped a piece of the pie onto a plate, and he was sure her hand was shaking when she set it down in front of him.

"Thank you Temperance. It looks wonderful." He caught her hand after she had set the plate down and held it to his lips while staring into her eyes. She pulled her chair around to sit closer to him.

"Try it before you thank me. It's my first attempt at something like this."

She watched nervously as he took the first bite. He smiled at her, eyes shining.

"It's delicious Bones. I am officially seduced."

She was getting nervous as he ate the dessert, getting closer to the crust with each bite. She was starting to panic that maybe she had given him the wrong piece when suddenly his eyes went wide as his teeth came down on something hard. He pulled the offending object from his mouth and stared at it in confusion.

He turned it over and over in his hands, brushing the remnants of the pie filling off of it, confused by the slight familiarity of it. It sparkled in the light and he knew what it was. He looked at her with eyes wide open. She grinned at him.

"Seeley Booth, will you marry me?"

He sat then in stunned confusion for a minute, searching her face for any sign that this might be some kind of joke. Her eyes were smiling and serious. He stood up and pulled her up beside him. She wrapped her arms around his waist.

"You got me Bones. You got me forever!" He picked her up and spun her around and around. She hoped her dinner stayed put as a wave of nausea passed her over. As though he sensed it, he put her down and kissed her as passionately as he could. When they finally broke apart, his whole existence was smiling.

"How did you find the ring? How did you know?" His words were quick. His breath was fast.

"You left in your pocket and then you left it on your counter. It wasn't exactly a mission for the Tac team!!"

"Do you still have the box?"

"Yes, but why?"

"Get it and I'll show you."

She went into her bedroom and came back moments later with the small, black box. She handed it to him and he opened it, pulling out the velvet cushion that the ring sat in. He pulled a silver chain out from under it and set the box on the counter. He turned back to her.

"This is for now," he grabbed her hand and put the ring on her finger, "and this is to put it on when you're in the field." He put the chain around her neck, kissing it when he was done.

"You know, so you don't get any brain matter on it when you're messing around with some guy's maxillary orbit."

"Hey, you said that right!" She sounded impressed.

He led her into the bedroom, slowly and seductively removed all of her clothing and made love to her all night. There were no inhibitions between them that night. It was all passion.

He had never been so happy. She had never been so happy that he was so happy. The night could last forever as far as they were both concerned.


	5. Error and Trial

Chapter Five

"What the hell Bones!? Why would you do that?"

The squints remaining on the platform were cut off from the argument as Bones shut the door to her office behind her and Booth.

Cam, Angela, Hodgins and Wendell stood in shock. Only moments before they had all been having a group laugh at Brennan explaining some of the ridiculous names Booth wanted to name their child. He seemed to think the baby should be named after various sports figures, or movie stars, or great warriors through history. She didn't agree, and they had been arguing about if for weeks. They weren't even close to coming to an agreement about what their child would be referred to for the rest of its life. They both did agree that they still had time. Not too much, mind you, but time.

Brennan had begun another anecdote about why he was thinking that the name Caesar would be a great choice, when the man himself, stormed up onto the platform, ignoring everyone but his fiancé, and removed her by the arm, not too forcefully but convincingly, with the stern question,

"A word?"

He looked upset. The argument started before they were even down the stairs. The squints failed to get the gist of it, but they were concerned, especially Wendell. He was newer to the group and had not been exposed to the years of, sometimes, heated arguments between the partners. He looked to the others for answers. All they could do was shrug their shoulders at him. No one had any idea what this one was about. They heard the raised voices through the closed door. This was a good one.

"Seriously Temperance! Why would you do that?" Booth yelled at her. He didn't mean to yell, necessarily, but his emotions were getting the better of him. They were standing in front of her desk, face to face, toe to toe.

"Why are you attacking me?? I did it for you!" She yelled back, her emotions also coming to the surface. She didn't like this challenge that he was throwing down.

"I mean c'mon Temperance. It's not just you I'm worried about," his voice was slightly less raised now, but still very affected. His eyes shot quickly to her expanding middle. "We're getting married in less than a month, I mean, you've got to learn to trust me."

"I do trust you Booth, but you would have stopped me from going." Her voice returned to a normal pitch, but didn't lose any of the emotion.

"You're damn right I would have stopped you. It was stupid. What if something happened to you? Or the baby? Did you even think of that?" His eyes were on fire. His hands shook slightly, more from the fear than the anger that he felt. He saw the first sign that she was backing down.

"Nothing was going to happen. He agreed to meet in a public place, and don't you think that for even one second of any day, that I don't think of this baby."

He couldn't read the look on her face now; the anger seemed to be creeping back. He ever so slightly regretted his choice of words.

"Why would he want to meet you anyway? That man almost killed me Bones. His punch caused the bleed in my brain that almost took me from you? Can you forgive that so quickly?"

"No, I don't forgive him, but he called me and said he wanted to talk. He sounded very rational. He said you wouldn't return his calls?"

Brennan had no idea that Booth would react this way to her meeting with his father. His father had told her in his phone call that he was back in town for his trial, which was approaching more rapidly than either of them wanted to admit. She hadn't really wanted to see him, but the older Booth was very insistent. She had finally agreed, grudgingly, to meet him for a cup of coffee. Obviously, her assumption of what Booth's reaction would be had been well off the mark. She wondered briefly how he had found out.

"I wouldn't return his calls because he almost killed me. I have no need for him in my life. I know that now. I have no need for him in our life. Do you understand that Bones?" He wondered how to get the point across to her.

"I understand. I agree with you. I just wanted to hear what he had to say. I was curious. I'm sorry... I should have told you that I was going." She truly was.

"Yeah, but, you should..." he paused, realizing he had just won the argument.

He smiled at her, ready to start making up, but he noticed that her eyes suddenly looked very far away. She let out a gasp, and leaned back onto her desk. Her hands flew to her stomach, and her look turned to one of panic. Argument forgotten, he rushed to her side. He supported her with one hand on her back, and his other went for her arm.

"What's wrong? Is it the baby?" His eyes now matched the panic in hers.

She didn't say anything, but raised one finger in a gesture for him to wait,

"What Temperance? Talk to me, what's wrong?"

Her facial expression went from one of panic to one of wonder stopping momentarily on each emotion in-between. She glimpsed at him, and looked back down to her stomach. She took his hand and placed his fingers on a spot just to the left of her navel. She waited. He waited for something to happen, and then he felt it. Just a tiny little flutter that melted his heart into pieces. Hers too.

"Is that...?" He couldn't finish the question, because he felt the tiny flutter again. He stared at her, amazed.

"That's our baby Booth!" There were tears in her eyes.

"Wow." It was all he was able to say.

They waited for a while longer, but nothing else happened. He kept his hand on her stomach, and kissed her cheek. She smiled a little.

"Thank you Bones." His voice finally came to him.

"For what?"

"For sharing that with me. It was amazing. It makes it seem just a little bit more real. Rebecca hated to be touched when she was pregnant with Parker. I missed out on so much." The memory made him just a little sad.

"I know Booth. You can touch me any time you want." She grinned up at him, and kissed him on the chin.

"Gladly!" His hand circled her stomach for a while longer hoping to feel the baby move again, but that was apparently all they were going to get for now. He looked back at her, beamed at her for a second, and couldn't help himself,

"You really should have told me where you were going though!"

The argument started all over again.

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Booth and Bones sat in an FBI meeting room, waiting for Caroline Julian to show up. They were preparing for the trial that would begin tomorrow, and Caroline wanted to go over some last minute pointers as to what they could expect was going to happen. Bones would be testifying, as she was a first hand witness to the events that led to the assault on Booth by his father. Caroline was running late, and Bones was getting impatient, as she was very hungry and wanted to go for lunch. Booth was doing his best to console her.

Caroline burst into the room, looking at the two like she was mad at them. They looked at each other in confusion.

"What's this I hear about you two being engaged? Didn't it occur to you that I might like to know such information before we go into the court room?" She looked at the stunned faces of the partners, and without waiting for a reply, she continued,

"I mean, I find out that you are pregnant by overhearing some pointy-headed medical examiner gossiping over lunch with a bunch of other FBI agents, that you threw up at a crime scene... and now, THIS!?"

She glared at Brennan now, who just stared back, unsure of how or why to defend herself.

"Caroline, I don't really think it's relevant to this trial, we just..." Brennan looked at her partner for support, but he was hiding a smile behind his hand. He was of no help whatsoever.

"Don't panic Cherie, I just think that we could win some sympathy from the jury if you wear a tight shirt and show off that lovely little figure of yours. They always sympathize with pregnant women whose fiancés end up in a coma. This case is going to be impossible to win, you both know that right?" The two partners nodded. They had known that from the beginning.

"How pregnant are you again?" Caroline was trying to get a good look at her stomach, which was hidden behind the table where they were sitting.

"Just over twenty-two weeks." Booth answered for her.

"You're hardly showing at all, when I was five months pregnant, I looked like I had swallowed a beach ball. Though, I had a lot more to start with, now, show me this pretty little ring that our Special Agent Booth finally put on your finger."

Brennan raised her left hand towards the prosecutor, who snatched her hand and examined the diamond closely. She looked at Booth with approval. She went back to studying the ring and when she noticed something she dropped Brennan's hand and looked questioningly at the two.

"Why are there teeth marks on the band?"

She didn't get an answer because of the laughter that filled the room.

They spent the better part of an hour going over the strategy that they would implement. Caroline warned Brennan that the defence would be tough on the cross examination. She better be prepared to cry, they had to play this jury with every card they had, and they didn't have a lot. Booth's father had slugged his son repeatedly, but Booth had actually thrown the first punch, so they knew he was going to claim self-defence. Their goal was not to convict but to let the world know what an ass this man was. They would have it in writing with the transcripts from the trial. That was their primary goal. They all agreed that it would have to do and they were confident with how they were going to proceed.

Later that night the couple sat on the couch in her living room talking about nothing in general, just relaxing with each other. Relaxing before they would face his father in the court room. Booth had not seen his father since their altercation in the hospital waiting room the night that Jared had died. He had felt his wraith the next day when the older Booth cold-cocked him and knocked him unconscious, but they had not had any contact other than that, until Brennan's clandestine meeting with him days earlier.

The morning of the trial, Brennan fretted over what to wear, taking Caroline's advice seriously. Booth just laughed at her, to which her response was to glare at him. She finally selected a semi-casual suit that had fit her perfectly only months ago, but now was very tight around her expanding middle. When she asked her fiancé how she looked, and if the outfit made her look overweight, Seeley replied the only way a wise man should,

"Temperance, you look beautiful." He was rewarded with a very tender kiss.

They made their way into the courtroom and sat behind the prosecutors table waiting for the formalities to begin. Booth took her hand and held it tightly, revealing only to her how nervous he was. Caroline came into the room and gave them both a 'thumbs up' before she took her place behind the table, taking papers out of her briefcase, and trying to organize herself to argue the case that she knew she would not win.. She would put on one hell of a show though.

They were looking towards the jury box when his father entered the court room with his lawyer. The older Booth tried to make eye contact with his son, but Seeley was having nothing to do with it. Temperance squeezed his hand in reassurance. He squeezed back. It wasn't long before the bailiff entered the court room from behind the Judge's bench. He asked very formally that everyone rise. Booth continued to hold tightly to his partner's hand. She was impressed by his grip.

The Judge requested that everyone be seated, and the trial was underway. He asked Caroline to begin with her opening statement after the jury had filed in, and she stood up and took an exaggerated breath. Before she could say anything, the Defence attorney stood up and requested permission to address the court. There were confused looks by everyone as permission was granted by the Judge. He was curious as well.

"Your Honour," he began, "At this time, against my advice, my client wishes to change his plea to guilty."

Everyone was stunned. Caroline turned around to look at Booth and Brennan, and just shrugged her shoulders. She turned back to the Judge and said,

"The prosecution has no objection to this development, but perhaps we could meet in your Honour's chambers to discuss this further?"

The Judge agreed, and the parties who were involved followed the judge through the back of the court room. After a while, the only people left sitting in the room were the forensic anthropologist and the FBI Agent. They were astonished by the turn of events. Eventually Booth turned to her and asked,

"What the hell did you say to him the other day Bones?"

"I told him that perhaps the only way that you would ever forgive him, was if he took his own advice, and started taking responsibility for his actions. It would seem that he took my advice."

He stared at his partner without saying anything. His respect and love for her grew to unsubstantiated levels in that moment.

"You know Booth," she finally said, getting uncomfortable with his staring, "I told you that I did it for you. And you yelled at me. Maybe next time you will just trust me." They now stared at each other, and he finally replied,

"Thank you... for everything."

The hand that was not being held by hers, reached over and rested on her swollen abdomen. They both felt the flutters, and smiled at each other.


	6. the white haired man cometh

Chapter Six

Brennan was lying in bed, doing nothing except waiting for her soon-to-be-husband to come back from a case that he was investigating. She had declined to go along; she had already put in a full day at the Jeffersonian, and was exhausted. Lately she had been realizing her limits and was finding herself more tired all the time. Booth seemed proud of her for her honesty that she couldn't do everything, but it still killed her to not be with him as he interrogated the witnesses and suspects. To be part of the action. For the first time in their relationship, she seemed okay with taking the back seat to her partner. Willingly letting him drive. Figuratively speaking.

She worried though, as she was doing now, that something would happen to him. She accepted that she would never get over her fear that something would happen to her partner, leaving her alone again in the world. She reminded herself that she would never really be alone as she rubbed her ever growing belly. The baby kicked hard, and she smiled. She wished Booth was there now, he was obsessed with the child within her, and was constantly rubbing her stomach, and talking to the baby, playing music, though she was not always fond of his choices. He would be fascinated by the activity now. The phone rang and she was removed from her thoughts. She smiled when she saw the number.

"Hello Daddio!" She answered the phone with a light-hearted voice. He instantly laughed on the other end of the line. He loved her newly discovered nick-name for him.

"Are you okay Temperance? How's Junior?" His voice sounded tired, but he tried to sound upbeat, knowing how much she worried about him when they were apart.

"The baby is kicking up a storm right now. We miss you. Are you almost done?" He loved it when she spoke in the plural form.

"I just have to drop off a suspect at a precinct down town. I'm going to let someone else do the interrogation though. I'm beat. I just want to be next to you right now."

She suspected by the tone in his voice that he really was tired. He had been in the field since early that morning, and had gone non-stop all day. The phone call ended with the promise that he was only an hour away. She fell asleep relieved.

It was actually hours before he was standing at the foot of the bed, watching her sleep. He had been caught up by another FBI agent who wanted his input on a case that Booth had passed off to him. It was a case similar to the one he and Temperance had investigated months earlier. Another body had been found dumped in the same farmer's field. They had never found the guilty party and the case had gone cold. When the new body was found, Booth admitted he didn't have the time to give his full attention and he passed it on to another Agent. His life was so busy now, with the baby and now the wedding less than a week away. He smiled at the woman in the bed, noticing that her eyes crept open. He loved everything about her.

He sat next to her on the bed and rubbed her stomach. He felt the movement and his heart lifted, like it always did. He could not wait to meet this child. This little bit of joy that would complete his already perfect life. He leaned over and kissed her belly and whispered something to it that she did not catch. The baby kicked again. Hard.

"Did you feel that Bones? I swear Junior here knows that I'm its dad!"

"Of course I felt that Booth. There are studies that say the fetus can hear and differentiate voices in-utero. Bonding can occur even before birth. It seems that this baby knows when you are nearby. It always moves a lot more when you come into the room."

The warm, maternal glow on her face made him warm too. Very warm in a certain area, but he was exhausted. Instead of initiating a session of love making, he curled up beside her and laid his head on her chest, keeping one hand on her stomach. She ran her fingers through his hair, and said to him,

"I have to go with Angela in the morning to pick out her bridesmaid dress, is there anything you have to do?" He turned his head to look at her with a smirk.

"Yeah... you!"

They were both asleep moments later, with grins on their faces.

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When Angela arrived the next morning, it took her friend longer than usual to answer the door and when she did, she was wearing only a robe, her hair was messy and her lips were red. It did not look as though she had been sleeping. The artist made her way into the living room with a smile.

"Oh my god you guys, save something for the honeymoon!"

Booth had come out of her bedroom, wearing only a pair of shorts. His lips were also very red. He didn't look embarrassed that Angela had interrupted something. He kissed his fiancé on the lips in front of her friend, but she pulled away, not embarrassed, but she had a question.

"Booth are we going on a honeymoon? I didn't even think of that." She thought she had covered all the bases for their forthcoming nuptials. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck.

"Yes we are. I have been planning something very special." He continued to kiss her neck.

"What?"

"It's a surprise."

Angela cleared her throat, loudly, reminding them that she was still in the room.

"Bren, go get dressed. We should get going." The woman smiled, but pulled away from Booth and made her way to her bedroom. Booth remained in the living room, just smiling at the artist.

"You go get dressed too. You're making me all hot." Redness finally came to Booth's cheeks, and he followed his fiancé down the hallway. Angela could not help but stare at his sculpted body. She called after them,

"And leave the door open! We have places to be!" She laughed as Booth shut the door behind him. She sat down on the couch to wait. It might be a while.

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The day before the wedding, Booth and his partner waited outside of Doctor Sweets' office for the young man to see them. He had informed them, that the FBI insisted that he do an evaluation of the two, to ensure that they were still in the game, that their minds could still comprehend the importance of the work they did. That they were not too distracted by the events in their personal life to still be a cohesive, crime solving unit.

They sat in the waiting room, alone, except for a middle-aged man, with shock white hair. The man twitched nervously, but quietly and the partners soon forgot that he was even there. They only had attention for each other. The man watched them with interest though.

They were arguing again about what to name the baby. Booth kept poking her side, trying to get her to smile, but she was annoyed that she had to waste precious time that she could be finishing up work at the Jeffersonian, waiting to be profiled by the young Doctor. She grabbed his hand to keep it still, and he laughed at her.

"What about, if it's a girl, we name her Xena?" He teased, trying to lighten her mood.

"Booth, that is a ridiculous name. If it's a boy, I think we should name him Seeley." She teased back, knowing of his intense dislike of his name.

"That's not even funny. I would not do that to my son." He shot back at her, before he realized she was joking. "Seriously though, what about Jared? He was kind of the reason we got together finally, right? It would be an honour."

She looked him in the eyes for a while, realizing that he was, in fact, serious, and then replied to him,

"We can put that on the 'maybe' list." He kissed her cheek and rubbed her stomach.

"Or, what about Ghandi. That's a good name too! Lots of anthropological significance!"

Her look made him stop talking finally. She rolled her eyes, and loved him for trying.

The door finally opened and the Doctor motioned for them to come in. They did so hand in hand. The man with the white hair continued to watch them. When they had shut the door, he got up and moved to the chair that had been vacated by Brennan.

In the office, Brennan's mood was not improved when Sweets began his evaluation process of the two and where their minds were in terms of their jobs. Even Booth's mood was changed when they learned that the FBI was seriously considering terminating the partnership, for fear that the two would not be able to keep their personal and professional relationship separate. Both partners argued against this so much and had so many good points that by the end, Sweets was convinced that they should continue to work together. It was a mutually symbiotic relationship. Their track record was good enough to justify everything.

As they left the office, happy to have resolved the problem, neither of them noticed the man with the white hair take their picture with his camera phone. His twitching increased as he waited for his appointment.

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The morning of the wedding had arrived, and Booth was as nervous as he had ever been about anything. Except perhaps the birth of his son, Parker, and the not-too-far-off arrival of the new baby. He wasn't nervous about marrying Temperance, about that he had no doubts at all, he was nervous that she would change her mind, or run away scared at the last minute. He would be happy when it was all over. Very happy.

He and Parker arrived at the location of the wedding all dressed in their tuxes, looking dashing. He had spent the night at his own apartment with his son, explaining to Brennan the age old superstition that the groom should not see the bride before the wedding. She had laughed at him, but let him go. She needed the night to calm herself down.

Booth stood at the front of the audience that was gathering nicely, filling the empty chairs quickly. Instead of "bride's side' and 'groom's side", he noticed the seats were being divided by FBI family and Jeffersonian family. He smiled nervously when Caroline flashed him a smile and an approving nod. He was starting to hyperventilate a little when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned sharply and smiled when he saw his grandfather, who had arrived to stand beside him.

"Don't worry Seeley, she's not going anywhere without you." The old man looked dashing as well in his tux. The older, more distinguished version of Booth calmed his grandson down with his words.

"I hope not, I've dreamed of this day for a long time."

"I know. Now, I'll go find out what's keeping the ladies..."

The grandfather, gave his prodigy a warm hug, and said he would see him shortly. Booth was calmer, and his eyes scanned the audience again. There was Russ and Amy, and the girls, and he realized that Max must be around somewhere. He was thrilled for his partner, that her father had made it back from who knows wherever he had gone, in time to walk his daughter down the aisle. So many people had made it. He was touched. What he didn't know, was that there was four to one odds against Brennan actually making it through the ceremony. The bet had been started by a few of his FBI buddies who had followed this relationship from the beginning. Even Caroline had dropped a twenty that Brennan would leave him at the altar. Booth looked at his watch... she was late.

The ladies were in a tent away from the crowd. A crisis had arisen, and they were trying to find a way to solve it. It turned out, that the baby had grown so much since her last fitting of the dress, that no one was able to do up the buttons. Cam and Angela tried everything they could think of, but no solution would present itself. Brennan sat in tears, while Angela tried to console her, and keep her perfect make-up from running and smudging. The tent flap opened, and the three women turned to see who it was. An older version of Booth's brown eyes met them all. Brennan stood up and ran to the man, giving him a huge hug.

"The groom is starting to panic and I was sent to see what the problem was!" Brennan introduced the grandfather to her two friends, explained exactly what the hold-up was.

He looked around the tent, and was lost in thought, until he spied bouquet of daisies sitting on a table in front a mirror. He had the solution. The three of them spent the next minutes, weaving the daisies and the stems through the button holes that would not do up. It looked amazing when they were finished. They were ready to go. They left the tent, and Hodgins and Max were there, waiting to make the final walk down the aisle.

Temperance's father and Booth's grandfather had a little show down, arguing over who was going to be more proud when they walked down the aisle. They both had also dreamed of this day. Brennan finally interrupted them with the suggestion that they should really get going, before Seeley thought she had run away. All agreed on that point.

Booth watched the back of the crowd, growing more nervous by the minute. Parker stood very close to him, and gave his father a reassuring pat on the back every so often. For a six-year-old he was very observant of the situation. Finally, there was movement from behind the stand of trees that bordered the chairs and flowers where the wedding had been set up in the park.

Booth had tears in his eyes, as first, his grandfather, paired with Angela walked down the aisle. They were followed by Hodgins, who followed the first ones with Cam on his arm. They all looked at him with smiles. No one could believe this moment had finally come. His breathe caught in his throat when he finally saw her.

She, with her arm tucked tightly in her father's, stood at the end of the aisle, and paused. Their eyes met, and there was no more doubt in either of their minds that this was really going to happen. Their eyes never left each other's as she walked forward. He stepped forward as she and her father reached the front of the crowd, with his hand outstretched.

As Max put his daughters hand in his, he leaned forward and whispered in Seeley's ear,

"If you so much as harm a single hair on my daughter's beautiful head, or cause her pain, I will burn you."

Booth believed him with every fibre of his existence. Max turned to his daughter, and told her,

"You look beautiful Sweetheart. Your mother would have been very proud of you today." They both had tears in their eyes now.

Temperance let Seeley take her hand, and they turned to face the justice of the peace. Her one firm conviction about the wedding was there be absolutely no religious connotation to the ceremony. Booth had agreed. This was one thing he knew she would not concede. He didn't mind, he was getting everything he wanted.

As the justice started the ceremony, a commotion started in the audience and the partners turned around to see what the disturbance was.

A man in a suit was walking down the aisle, with folder in his hand. When he had the attention of the two, he began,

"I am Agent Nicholls with the state department, and after reviewing your marriage licence, and doing a thorough background check of you two, because of your security clearance, it has been discovered that Temperance Brennan is already married. I can't allow this ceremony to continue."

Brennan and Booth looked at each other in shock. They said nothing, but Seeley dropped her hand. His face turned three shades of red, and she put her hands up in defence. Her face was giving nothing away.

"What the hell Bones?!?" He looked ready to punch something, and the crowd burst out in animated conversation.

Before it could go any further, Hodgins started to giggle, and when his laughter turned hysterical, everyone turned to look at him in surprise.

"It's a joke you guys... When you wouldn't let me throw you a bachelor party, Booth, I had to come up with another way to make this day memorable for you guys!! I paid that guy to say that....he's actually just a janitor at the Jeffersonian."

Hodgins continued to laugh, and slowly everyone's shock also turned to laughter. It was minutes before the crowd was under control, and the ceremony continued. Not before Booth threatened to make this up someday to Hodgins, but he had a sparkle in his eye. Hodgins had got them good.

As he turned back around to take Brennan's hand again, he noticed his father standing at the back of the crowd. Temperance had warned him that she had invited him; neither of them thought that he would actually show up. This day was full of surprises.

The rest of the nuptials were short and sweet, as per the request of the bride. In less than ten minutes, they were officially recognized by the state as being legally married. No rings were exchanged, only vows, and there was not a dry eye in the surrounding area as the two let the world know of their love and respect for each other.

The chairs were removed and the square was soon a raging party that everyone in attendance would remember for all time. At one point in the evening, Brennan turned to her husband and asked him why she had noticed a lot of cash being passed from hand to hand by various people in the crowd. He had no idea, but was also curious.

As midnight fell, the married couple made their departure amid well-wishers and family. They went back to her apartment and began their life together by expressing physically their devotion to each other. It was a good night for them both.

They didn't notice the man with the white hair follow them back to her place from the location of the wedding. They only had eyes for each other.


	7. All is well ?

Chapter Seven

Husband and wife spent the entire morning after the wedding doing what married couples do. Each other. Her gravid condition did nothing to thwart his passion for her. It actually increased it. Booth had told her that they had a flight to catch in the evening, but he still refused to tell her where they were going. Until then, he had told her they weren't allowed to get dressed. She asked if that was another antiquated tradition of matrimony and he replied with kiss, that every tradition started somewhere.

They lay together after one quick but passionate session of their commitment to each other. Arms around each other, and bodies spent. It had been a long, fulfilling night, and the morning seemed like it was not going to be any different. He repositioned himself so that his head was against her belly, his ear pressed lightly against the skin that was stretching as their child grew. He felt the light taps against his cheek and was never more thrilled than he had been in his life. His wife and his child, all within his reach.

"What are you thinking about Seeley?" Brennan asked him after some time had passed. Her fingers traced the back of his neck, and he shivered at her touch.

"How happy I am right now. How happy I am with everything that has happened in the last six months. Well, except for the whole brain injury part, that wasn't exactly a highlight, but everything worked out right. I never thought that we'd be here, where we are right now." Her face looked stricken at the memory. She had feared for his life, and wondered how he could joke about it. Her facial features neutralized, but her eyes had just a hint of kidding in them.

"Never say never, right Booth."

"That's one of the smartest things that I've ever heard you say!" He turned his head towards her so that she could see him smile at her. Their eyes connected and didn't let go.

"Did you see your father there yesterday? I really didn't think he was going to show up. I thought he was in a rehab facility serving the sentence the judge gave him." She had a secret look in her eyes and she looked at him to see if he knew. He did.

Her fingers now traced the side of his face tenderly. He moved in the bed so that they were on the same pillow, face to face. Her stomach pressed between them and he loved the experience of feeling the baby move against his own abdomen.

He had known that she had spoken to Caroline Julian on his father's behalf. He wasn't upset, but he wasn't exactly thrilled about it either. He sensed that she was trying to pay him back for all the help he had offered when her father had been in jail, and she had no desire to see him. The roles were reversed this time. He felt his situation was different. He remembered saying once that if Brennan's father had lived in the time of the Old West; he would have been considered a hero for his actions. Seeley knew that even in the old times, a man who drank and beat his wife and children, probably would have been looked down upon.

He didn't know how to make her understand how severe his relationship with his father had been. He made a mental note to bring it up to Doctor Wyatt the next time they met. That would not be for at least two weeks while he took her on a honeymoon that she would never forget.

"Yeah, apparently some forensic anthropologist made a deal with Caroline, so that he could be escorted to the ceremony. I didn't talk to him though; I still don't think I'm ready. There is a lot of history between us you know..."

"Will you ever forgive him Seeley?" She looked at him warmth in her eye that made him warm too. Her hands slipped around to his back, under the sheet that covered him, and she continued the tracing with her fingertips, but kept it to his lower back.

"I can't answer that right now, Tempe, we'll see." She had noticed his use of her shortened name, and kissed him on the forehead. She liked it when it came from him. It sounded so right. He wanted to change the subject.

"So... what did you have to promise our friend Caroline to get her to agree to the terms of your deal? She's not one to just do a favour!"

"I had to promise to this to you every day." She replied as she kissed him passionately, "and this." Her hand moved from his back to his front, and all conversation ended.

Hours later, they were both finally dressed and he was trying to get her to pack a suitcase, without revealing their destination. She was having a hard time with the secrecy of their honeymoon location. She liked to plan, and prepare, and be well informed of any possible outcome. He would give nothing away.

"If I don't know where we're going, how do I know what to pack?" She was stubbornly refusing to put anything in the open suitcase on their bed.

"Just live a little bit. Be unexpected. Be frivolous!" He was having fun with this. "Or pack nothing and we'll spend two weeks with no clothes on."

"That doesn't seem reasonable Booth. Society has a pre-determined notion that one must cover up their puritan modesty. Though, I'll admit, I could be naked around you all day." She had made her way up to him from the other side of the bedroom and started to run her hands under his shirt and up to his chest. He grabbed her hands, and backed up, but he was smiling.

"Oh no you don't there, Bones... we've got a plane to catch! okay... I'll give you a hint. It might get messy, so bring some protection." She looked at him, confused.

"Booth, I'm already pregnant... why would we need protection? What else could happen?" She really had gotten his comment wrong. He laughed at her, and shooed her out of the room with the glib comment,

"Bones, I meant pack your gum boots!"

He closed the door to their bedroom on her with the promise that he would be happy to pack for her, and made the suggestion that she should go get something to eat. They had a long trip ahead of them. She wandered off to the kitchen smiling at his need to control this situation. She would find out shortly where they were going.

"You're being awfully bossy today Booth." She laughed as she walked towards lunch.

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They took a cab to the airport. She pestered him the whole way about how a woman who is over six months pregnant really shouldn't be flying for an extended period of time. It wasn't good for the circulation. He tried to reassure her that he had cleared it with her Doctor and everything would be just fine with 'Junior'. He promised her that he flight wasn't that long.

She started to assume that they would be going to some resort in the Caribbean. A classic honeymoon spot. She wasn't disappointed, but she didn't think her husband would think too far outside the box when it came to their honeymoon. He would be traditional, of that she was nearly sure.

She had never been so wrong in her life. As they stood in line, waiting to check their bags and pick up their boarding passes, he finally spilled his secret. Having not spent a lot of the night sleeping, she was very tired, and was leaning her head against his shoulder. He had his arm around her shoulder when he leaned down and kissed the top of her head and said to her,

"Do you want to know now?"

She lifted her head, turned to face him, and nodded.

"Well, Bones, you are going to spend two romantic weeks working with an archaeologist from the University Of Trujillo in northern Peru, as the consulting forensic anthropologist, helping to excavate a newly discovered tomb on the El Brujo site. It's apparently quite a discovery. Two mummies, lots of artifacts, lots of bones. You're going to love it." His grin lit up the airport. She was shocked. This was not at all what she had assumed.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to stand back and watch the woman I love do what she loves to do. This is a point I'm making, Bones, that I don't want you to feel that you have to give up anything of yourself just because you're married now, and soon to be a mother. You'll always be "Bones". You know that right." His eyes looked into hers, trying to make her see how honest he was.

She looked back at him, wondering how much more wonderful this man could get. He had done all of this for her, without her knowledge, and she loved him for it.

"Thank you Booth. But you know I have changed my mind a little bit, there are actually two things that I love to do now..." and she aggressively kissed the smug grin off his face. They stayed like that for awhile, and eventually the people behinds them in the line, went around them, and tried to keep their smiles to themselves.

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Their first week in Peru was amazing.

A guide met them at the airport in Lima, and drove them north, almost four hours to the dig site of El Brujo. Booth was annoyed that after an hour of pestering Fernando, their Peruvian guide, he let her drive their off-road vehicle. Booth was delegated to the back seat, and he tried not to be annoyed at the attention that Fernando paid to his wife. She was smoking hot after all, and he was hers. The two in the front spoke Spanish for most of the way, and Booth rode in the back, sunglasses on, and tried not to get even more annoyed.

The trip took them then, to the city of Trujillo. There, they found the house that he had rented, just outside of the city, and Fernando left them to their own accord. The small house was perfect... It was a single room, with everything they needed, big canopy bed in the middle, with mosquito netting all around it. Lots of windows that let the breeze in. There was also, a small bathtub in the corner that could be filled by bringing in fresh water from the well, and heating it on the small stove that was set in another corner. No television, no radio, and no cell phone service. It was perfect in her mind.

The following morning, Fernando picked them up early to drive them to the site of the dig, where Doctor Alejandro Marquez, the professor at the University of Trujillo, eagerly awaited meeting the renowned forensic anthropologist. Temperance sat in the backseat with Booth, making up for the fact that she had paid little attention to him on the trip there. They had bickered about in the evening, and Temperance felt she had made it up to him that night. When Fernando arrived, it was apparent he still had an ever so slightly bruised ego.

Their guide led them to El Brujo, the site of the Mache archaeological dig. The Mache, people who had lived in the area almost two millennia earlier, had left the temples in pristine conditions, and they had suffered little damage over the years. Recently a worker had discovered a treasure trove in a tomb that contained two, almost perfectly preserved mummies. It was every archaeologists dream. Temperance was honoured that she was to be include in the process. It was every anthropologists dream too. She leaned close to Booth and wondered out loud,

"How did you get me in Booth? It's hard to get permission from the Weise foundation to even be let in on the site, let alone be involved in the dig"

Her hair was blowing in the wind, from the roofless vehicle, and her cheeks were already flushed in excitement. Booth's heart caught in his chest, and he said to her, while pointing to himself with both index fingers,

"You married FBI sweetheart. I am a constant source of surprise." The grin on his face was cocky.

She glared at him for a minute, in mock anger, and finally said,

"Don't call me sweetheart, Booth."

His grin only got bigger,

"Sure thing Bones!" She swatted at him, and he caught her hand and kissed it. Fernando smiled at their interaction in the rear view mirror. He thought they were a perfect couple.

They stopped outside a huge dirt pile with tents all around it, and they were met by a man who looked every bit the archaeologist that he was. Dressed totally in khaki, with a wide brimmed white hat, he greeted them both with handshakes while Seeley did the introductions.

"Doctor Marquez, It's nice to finally meet you after so many phone calls. This is my wife, Doctor Temperance Brennan."

"It very nice to meet you Agent Booth," The man spoke in very heavily accented, if not perfect, English. "And Doctor Brennan, It is an honour to meet you. You're reputation precedes you. Thank you for coming."

As he made his way into one of the tents, he gestured for them to follow. He led them underground and into a chamber that was still very brightly painted. Seeley lost her to the mummies at that point. He was perfectly content to watch her work; her mind was only on the discoveries now. The two Doctors paid very little attention to him, and he did his best to stay out of their way

Day after day, Temperance went back to the chamber and documented the findings. Booth followed behind her everywhere she went, making sure she ate, and stopped to take breaks. He decided that was his role. He was there to take care of her. Her brain was occupied by her work. He loved it.

Sometimes, when he was embarrassed by the extremely sexually oriented statues and carvings that the doctors were making note of, and there were a lot of them, he would hang out with Fernando. Once he had gotten over his jealousy of the younger man's obvious crush on his wife, he was pleased to discover that the man was really quite entertaining. They spent hours together, touring the area, fishing, and just generally hanging out. Two guys, having fun.

Seeley was telling Temperance and the baby, about the spectacular fishing trip they had been on that day, when they were alarmed by a severe knock on the door. Booth opened the door to reveal two very serious looking soldiers with guns in-hand looking back at him. They said something in Spanish that he didn't quite catch. He turned to his wife for a translation, and she looked at him with big eyes.

"Booth, they want us to go with them. They say there's an emergency..."


	8. Fired

Chapter Eight

The soldiers guided the newlywed couple to a car outside of their small house. They weren't forced, the soldiers weren't hostile, and they let them gather a few important belongings, but they were in a hurry. One of the soldiers told Brennan, in Spanish, that there was a helicopter waiting to fly them to Trujillo, and from there, a small plane waited to fly them back to Lima. The FBI had been trying to find them for two days. The soldiers didn't know why. Booth was starting to think that the lack of cell phone service that both had relished had not been the best idea. Both of their phones beeped with messages as they ran from the helicopter to the waiting plane. Brennan looked at hers; eighteen messages saying '911 come home now'.

She held Booth's hand tightly on the just over an hour long flight back to Lima, and two FBI agents met them on the tarmac. Neither of them dared to speculate on what this was about. All they knew was that it was an emergency. A lot of effort by a lot of people had been made to find them. Booth kept his hand on Brennan's back as they approached the two men dressed in sharp suits.

"What's going on? What happened?" Booth was the first to ask, a quick glance at his wife revealed her emotions set in her eyes too.

"Agent Booth, Doctor Brennan, we are very sorry to have to interrupt your holiday, but if you will come with us, we can explain everything on the flight back to D.C."

The FBI agents led them towards a small private plane, not far from where they had just disembarked from the first. They were both shocked. Whatever happened must have been major. It was going to seem like a long, slow flight.

When they were secured on the private plane, the Agents who had met them explained that an emergency call had been made from her apartment three nights ago, and when the response crews got there, they found her apartment in flames. The whole apartment building had burned to the ground.

Brennan was shocked and saddened. All her belongings were gone. She had priceless artefacts throughout her place, as well as everything that was sentimental. The former of the two were in abundance. Her mind wandered for a minute, thinking of everything that was gone. Booth held her.

When that news seemed to have sunk in she suddenly remembered something else,

"Oh my god! My father was staying at my place while I was out of town! Is he alright?" Tears were suddenly in her eyes as she asked the two FBI agents.

One of them shook his head.

"I'm sorry Doctor Brennan, but investigators have found three bodies in the rubble, they were all burned beyond recognition, and we haven't been able to find any trace of your father since the fire. We've checked credit cards, bank cards...everything we can. There doesn't seem to have been any activity at all. The doorman remembers seeing him enter the building earlier in the evening, but never saw him leave. He does admit that he was busy at one point, helping one of your neighbours with some groceries, and the fire started shortly after. At this time we are trying to determine if one of the bodies is his. If you are able, we need your help to determine the identities of all three. Was there anyone else staying at your apartment, that you know of?"

Temperance managed to shake her head, no, before she collapsed against Seeley, burying her head in his shoulder. The sobs started and Booth held her face against him, comforting her as best he could.

"Let's not jump to conclusions Bones; we have no way of knowing for sure if one of those people is your father. Let's wait until you can examine the remains, then we'll know for sure."

He continued to hold her as she cried. He was worried what this might mean. Her emotional state due to her hormones might be extreme. He worried for the baby too. Too much stress might bring complications. His hand stroked her hair, and he murmured comforting words into it.

It was a long flight.

They were met by Sweets in the airport. He explained that he was sent as the FBI liaison, to take them to the remains at the Jeffersonian. The young Doctor knew that Brennan looked very pale beneath her tan, and she had been crying, her face gave it all away. Booth held by the arm and he looked to be very stressed. At least they had each other, he thought, for emotional support. He worried greatly about these two. They were a special project of his, and he hadn't told them yet that he was planning on writing a book about them. He admitted to himself, that he was afraid of what their reaction would be.

"Doctor Brennan, you look tired, did you want to stop off somewhere for something to eat and rest a bit before we go to the Jeffersonian?"

She walked past the Doctor without saying anything, and he looked at Booth with a questioning glance. The taller man just shrugged his shoulders and gestured with his head for Sweets to follow them.

"It's okay Doctor Brennan, ignoring me is just a coping mechanism. You're dealing. That's good. That's healthy."

She continued to walk out of the airport, Booth holding her, and immediately hailed a cab. They both got in without another look at Sweets, who was left standing on the curb saying to himself,

"I have a car! I could drive us there..."

The entire way to the Jeffersonian she didn't say a word, and Seeley was really starting to worry. Her silence scared him, but he knew she had to know for sure before she would react again. It was her rational way of dealing with things. He wondered if her crying on the plane was all the result of the hormones raging through her expecting body.

They entered the lab unnoticed except for security guards who nodded at her and her partner. He followed her to her office where she tried to put on her blue lab coat, but was frustrated when it wouldn't do up over her constantly expanding abdomen. She threw the coat off in disgust and tried to storm out of the office, but Booth caught her by the arm before she could leave. He held her by both arms and made her look in his eye. She finally did.

"Are you sure about this Temperance? There are other people who can do the I.D. If it's really your father, do you want this to be the last image you have of him?" He was very serious. They had both, at some time, dealt with victims who had been killed by fire. It was never pretty.

"Booth, no one can do it better than I can. It's what I do remember." Her voice was harsh, but she leaned up and kissed him on the chin before she finally freed herself from his grasp and made her way to the platform.

She noticed halfway there, that she didn't have her pass-card, but she didn't care. She got to the bottom of the steps and walked right up. The alarm brought everyone's attention to her.

The two squints working on the platform covered their ears, and looked up at her. They were currently bent over the second set of remains of the three that were displayed. She immediately asked for an update. No one was surprised to see her there, and there was also no surprise that she dispensed with greetings. Right into it she went.

Cam stood up fully and Wendell followed her lead.

"Doctor Brennan, welcome back." She wanted to ask how the honeymoon had gone, but she knew this was not the right time. "We are currently trying to obtain enough DNA from this victim to run through the databank. See if there's a match."

Brennan went to the first victim, and made an initial analysis of the remains. She said mostly to herself, the others had already come to the same conclusion,

"Male... late forties to late fifties." She knew this could be her father.

Her focus went to the second body, which was blackened beyond the point of recognizing it as human. She dismissed it in seconds as she determined that the body was female. The third body was barely more than ash. There was nothing for her to establish about the final set of remains at this point. She looked around the platform, and asked Cam,

"Where is Angela?"

"She and Hodgins are trying to come up with a facial reconstruction, hoping there's enough to work with to make a reasonable estimate of the faces...On the first two anyway." She gestured hopelessly at the third. Brennan nodded acknowledgement that she had heard, and immediately got to work with her input into the task before them.

Booth had left her office but remained on the main floor, leaning against the wall opposite the platform, and settled against it with his arms crossed. He watched her work. Sweets found him there when he arrived, not far behind the partners. He approached Booth and patted his shoulder. The Special Agent looked at the hand touching him, looked back up at the Doctor and shook his head. The younger man snatched his hand back, but leaned on the wall beside him. They both watched her work for awhile.

"Is she okay?" Sweets enquired, not taking his eyes off the obviously pregnant woman.

"Nope." Was all Seeley replied.

"Is she compartmentalizing this? Detaching herself from the psychological effects that this might have?"

"Not yet, but it's still pretty new to us."

Sweets liked how Booth had said us. They were partners in every sense of the word now, and the two of them would deal with this. He kept his thoughts to himself.

They stood there for an unknown amount of time, watching the squints work over the bodies, not saying anything. Eventually, Angela walked around the far corner of the platform, swiped her card, and went up the stairs. She had a number of papers in her hand. She went up to her best friend, gently touched her stomach, and then the two hugged. The artist pulled her friend away from the others and they spoke for some time. Angela showed Brennan the papers in her hands and the two men watching the process unfold, saw her gasp and put her hand to her stomach.

Booth took off from where he had been leaning and was at her side in seconds, setting off the alarm, for the second time in a short while.

"Tempe...tell me what's wrong?" He held her waist, and supported her weight.

"I think it's just a cramp Booth. They will happen occasionally. It's normal."

He looked her in the eyes and saw she was telling the truth. His heart rate slowed down a little. She stood up a little straighter and took the papers from her friend, who was watching the married couple with interest, but saying nothing. She had been startled too, by the gasp.

Brennan lay out on a table nearby, the papers that Angela had brought. They were computer rendered likenesses of the faces of two of the victims. The three of them stared at the pictures, but no similarity could be determined to her father. Brennan sighed and leaned against the table, her head down. Booth and Angela both rubbed her back.

"It's not him."

Angela felt it was her place to say,

"Sweetie, there's still the third body. We can't rule anything out yet. We can't come to any conclusions until all the facts are in."

Brennan recognized those words.


	9. Burned

Chapter Nine

It was very late, or very early, when Booth decided it was time to be firm.

She had stubbornly been working for four straight hours and it was time to go home. He pulled her away from the remains of the second body, she resisted, but he had her by the arm and she couldn't escape. He led her towards her office, the whole while she was fighting him, but when they entered her office and shut the door, he wrapped her in a hug, and he felt a little bit of her tension melt away. She hugged him back.

"Temperance...you need to rest okay?" He was surprised when she agreed.

He told her that they would go to his place, and sleep. They both needed it, and they could be back first thing in the morning. Again, she agreed. The squints remaining in the lab had all told her that they were not going home until they had identified all the remains as her father, or not. She was grateful.

On the cab ride to his apartment, she asked the driver if he would take a slight detour so they could drive past her ruined home. She needed to see it. Booth worried if this would be good for her or not. She still hadn't really released any emotion since the plane ride home, but he would wait. It was coming.

The cab driver slowed as they went past the burnt out ruins, but he didn't completely stop. Temperance stared out the window, leaning forward, and Booth could see the tears in her eyes in her reflection in the window. He rubbed her lower back in an effort to be comforting. He was. She put her hand on his knee and squeezed. As the car approached the end of the block and started to speed up, she leaned back in the seat and sighed loudly.

Booth took hold of her hand and said to her,

"It's just stuff Temperance. It can all be replaced; everything that's important is in the back of this cab right now." He gently rubbed her stomach, and kept his hand there. She put her hands over his, and smiled up to him with tired, sad eyes.

"Booth... I don't think my father is one of the bodies back at the lab."

"What makes you say that, I thought you hadn't made a positive identification on any of the remains yet?"

She leaned against him.

"Well, there's no evidence that proves my theory, but in your words, I'm just speculating. My mother has been dead for over fifteen years." He wondered where she was going with this. "My father has never taken off his wedding ring, and there was no evidence of any ring brought back with the bodies. It would have been there."

She had an interesting point, he had to admit. He convinced her that this was a very good time to speculate. It meant there might still be hope. Booth wondered, to himself, if Max wasn't one of the deceased people in the lab, then what the hell had he gotten himself into? What had happened?

Seeley unlocked the door to his apartment and led her inside. They had spent nearly every night at her place since they had gotten together, finally, and he felt strange in his own home. He guessed it was their home now. Long term plans could be decided when they felt ready. For tonight, all they needed was sleep. She lay down on his bed and was asleep before she took off her clothes. The same clothes she had been wearing since they had left their small house in Peru. He gently removed them for her, kissed her bare belly, and crawled into the bed next to her. He was asleep shortly thereafter.

What they didn't notice, was a man sitting in a car, outside on the street. He had watched them arrive, leave the cab and walk up the steps before they disappeared from his sight. He smiled to himself, and twitched a little. He adjusted the cap on his head that covered his head of shock white hair. They were home. Plan B could commence. He would be smarter this time and not get interrupted by anyone. He dialled a number on his phone and drove away quietly into the night.

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The couple slept through the rest of the night and didn't awake until the morning when his cell phone rang from his jacket pocket. He got up to answer it, and his wife stayed in bed a few more minutes to completely wake up. He had wandered into the kitchen while talking on the phone, but she couldn't make out what was being said. Eventually, she got up and followed him to the kitchen, wrapping herself in a robe but he was still talking on the phone, he smiled at her. Temperance made her way into the living room and her heart melted at what she saw.

In the middle of the room was an antique basinet. It was beautiful, wrought iron painted white, with flowing white fabric wove in between the metal. She went over to it and ran her hands along it. It was perfect. She didn't notice her husband come up behind her until he wrapped his arms around her, from behind, resting his hands on their baby. He kissed behind her ear, and she shuddered. In a good way.

"I was going to surprise you Bones. I found it awhile ago, and I wanted to paint it and fix it up before I brought it over to your place. Can you see our baby in here? All wrapped up and warm. It's beautiful...don't you think?"

"It is beautiful. I can't wait to meet this baby. I hope everything is okay. You know, that the rest of this pregnancy goes without complications. We don't have the best luck, do we Booth?" Her voice seemed sad.

"Everything is going to be just fine Temperance."

She suddenly remembered his phone call.

"Who was on the phone?" They both sat on the couch, staring at the basinet and dreaming of staring at their child in the small bed.

"That was Cam. They have identified body number two and body number three." He looked at her to gage her reaction. Her face remained still, but her eyes widened a little. "They were a couple reported to have left about a week ago from Virginia. Married couple who had gone on their honey moon. Never heard from again until the bride's mother reported them missing yesterday. It's definitely them."

Brennan looked at him, daring to hope, but there was still one body left unidentified.

"How do they know for sure? There's no way DNA results would be back so quickly, even though we have the best equipment in the country at the Jeffersonian."

"Well, FBI found his mostly burned wallet in the ruins, near the body and," he paused, "It turns out the woman was six and a half months pregnant. Cam confirmed it with the remains. It looks like them."

They both sat back and let the information sink in.

"Cam said one more thing; after the family sent pictures for the squints to look at; everyone noticed that the couple bore an amazing resemblance to us. Height, body structure. Everything." He looked at his wife, wondering if she caught the significance of it. Of course she did.

"So, what you're saying is... there was a couple, who looked just like us and were expecting a baby like us, and they were found in the burned out remnants of my apartment. This is not good." Her face had a very strange look on it.

"No Tempe, this is not good..." His phone rang again and he got up and went to the kitchen to speak. Temperance stayed on the couch and wondered what the hell was going on. This was getting weird.

Booth came back into the room with an angry look on his face. He sat next to her again and said,

"The first body is definitely not your father. They had enough DNA to run through the databank whatever you call it, and a hit came up. Turns out he was an old criminal, who had kind of vanished into the black a few years ago."

She was confused by the angry look on his face. This was good new wasn't it? She asked him that. He continued,

"The FBI thinks now, that Max must have something to do with it, and they're barring us from the case in case we decide to tamper with evidence or something. This is bull. What could Max have done?"

They were in shock. Barring her from the case, essentially barred her from the Jeffersonian. He could work other cases, but she was in limbo.

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The next weeks passed slowly for Temperance. She and Booth decided that she would begin her sabbatical, and she would take the final months of her pregnancy to work on her next book, which much to her publisher's dismay had been put on the back burner for too long. She was bored quickly. She missed being in the field so much that after one particularly frustrating night of pestering, her husband agreed to let her take part in an interrogation. He did notice that her cheeks had a little bit more color in them as they drove home. He missed having her beside him. She was still there every night though. He still wondered how he could have gotten so lucky.

The Squints kept her posted on the case, but not much more had been determined as to what had happened. One thing that had been discovered was that a gas can found in the alley behind her former apartment building had been found to contain the fingerprints of one, Max Keenan. It only added to the mystery.

Why had Max burned the building down? If that's what really happened. Brennan hoped that her father would contact her, with some answers, but there was only silence from him. She worried more and more about him, she was sure that he had a good reason for what he had done. Booth had convinced her of that. He was not the type of man to randomly kill three people and burn down an entire apartment building. And if he had a good reason, why hadn't he contacted them. Maybe because his daughter was married to an FBI agent. Neither could do more than speculate.

They spent the final weeks leading up to the birth of their baby meeting and working with a mid-wife. Booth was petrified of the idea, but Temperance was adamant that she wanted to give birth at home. She had read somewhere that giving birth in water was a very non-harrowing way for the baby to make its way into the world. Seeley had been very surprised to find a child's wading pool in their living room when he arrived home one night. She seemed pretty sure this was the way to go.

The doctor's appointment two weeks before her due date revealed by ultrasound that the baby was sideways. If it didn't turn, she would be forced to go to the hospital for delivery. Seeley hoped, more than anything, that this child would be as stubborn as its mother, so its arrival would be around a fully trained medical staff. Time would tell. He kept his mouth shut about it.

Booth and Brennan met one night with Doctor Wyatt one last time before the birth of their child. They had driven separate vehicles, as she was returning from a visit with her best friend and Doctor Hodgins, and he had driven straight there from the Hoover building.

The baby was due any day, and they were both thrilled, but nervous. Booth had some experience, with his son Parker, but this was all new to Temperance. She conveyed her fears to the doctor and her husband and they all talked her down a little from the edge. They both felt better after the session, such as it was. Doctor Wyatt didn't even consider himself their psychiatrist anymore. He considered them friends, and the only payment he took was to let them pay for dinner.

Temperance made a move to leave. She was tired, and uncomfortable, and wanted nothing more than to go to their home and rest. Seeley stood up and helped her with her coat while she said her good bye to the Doctor. She said the next time she would see him he could meet their child. She had a bright gleam in her eye.

Her husband walked her to the door and kissed her good bye with the promise that after one more cup of coffee with Gordon, Gordon, he would be on his way home.

She asked him with a wink, if he was willing, she could think of a way to initiate labour when he got home. He told her with a smile, that he was on his way. She smiled at him and kissed him one more time before she left the diner and headed for her car. Booth watched her leave, and as she approached her car, he made his way back to the table. The Doctor looked at him with a serious face, but twinkling eyes,

"So, Seeley, how are you really feeling right now...?"

Booth made an exaggerated sigh, and smiled at the tall British man,

"I think things are about to get very interesting."

Both men laughed, and as Booth leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms, he looked out the window and saw a man with very white hair crossing the street where his wife had been only moments before. Just another citizen, enjoying the brisk D.C. night air...


	10. Still burning

Chapter Ten

Booth noticed first that her car was not parked in front of the apartment. He wondered about it, but didn't worry. She had probably parked around the corner. When he entered the darkened flat, he became aware that she hadn't been home since she left the diner, he worried a little. When he called her cell phone, and a man answered with the words,

"Too late Agent Booth. We got her," and immediately hung up,

He was officially worried.

He stood in their kitchen, snapped his phone shut, and tried to control his temper.

"Shit." Was all he said.

He had no idea who this guy was, but to find out, he had to stay in control. He had to figure this out. Who could help? He thought instantaneously of her co-workers. He called Cam. She answered the phone with a sleepy voice, and he filled her in on what had just transpired. She said she would call everyone else and they would meet him at the Jeffersonian as soon as they could.

He called her cell phone again, and again and again, but there was no more answer. He ran to his vehicle and flicked his siren as he made his way to his wife's work place. He called the Bureau and talked to a few higher officials and told them what had happened. What he knew of it anyway. They assured him a unit was being mobilized.

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Temperance had not seen what had knocked her unconscious. She was trying to put her key in the car door when she heard footsteps running towards her. She turned slightly, but the shock of the blow caught her by surprise, and she slumped to the ground. The man who had hit her quickly picked her up and put her in the back seat of her own car. He got in the driver's seat, and sped off down the street. He stopped a few blocks away and picked up another man, who had been waiting for this car. He smirked as he looked into the backseat at the unconscious forensic anthropologist. He looked at his partner in crime and said,

"Wow, she doesn't look so tough..." The older man with the white, white hair just looked at his younger brother. His eyes were filled with annoyance.

"Don't underestimate her; just make sure she stays unconscious. We only need her until we have the baby. Shouldn't be more than a few days by the looks of her." The older man looked at her in the rear view mirror and relished in the thought that he was finally so close to her.

He had watched her for months. Her and her FBI agent. Ever since the first meeting, the first time he had seen them outside of that upstart punk doctor's office, he knew that her baby would be perfect for him. He deserved it more than they did. He had done some research on the two by accessing restricted FBI files. He had paid a mint for that hacking program, and it had been worth every penny, they hadn't even planned for this baby, and now, they weren't going to have it. He was so close.

He continued to drive towards his destination, rambling in his head the whole way. His brother, in the passenger seat, ignored the occasional thought spoken aloud by his lunatic brother. He had seen that look in his eye before. He knew it was better to not attract attention to himself, and let the man ramble. He kept an eye on the woman in the back seat, just to make sure she was still breathing. She was.

Her phone rang in her pocket and the passenger reached back and took the phone. The caller ID flashed 'Booth', and he handed the phone to the driver. He clicked the phone open and put it to his mouth.

"Too late Agent Booth. We got her!" He closed the phone, and threw it out the window. She wouldn't need it again. He laughed at his brother, who looked at him with big eyes, but eventually, he too, joined in the laughter. The white haired man stopped laughing suddenly and looked at his brother.

"We have to ditch this car, and fast. When we get to the warehouse, I'll take the Doctor in with our other guest, and you take the car to the river and dump it." The man smiled. Everything was falling into place.

Temperance awoke hours later and had no idea where she was. She sensed she was lying on a blanket on a hard floor. Maybe she was sitting. She was still groggy. Her head hurt. She felt arms wrapped around her and instantly thought of her husband.

"Booth?" She spoke it out loud.

"Tempe, thank god, you're awake." She knew the voice didn't belong to her partner, but she recognized it. A hand brushed her hair out of her eyes.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, honey, I'm right here. I've got you."

"Where are we?" Her voice was very hoarse, and she seemed disoriented, but her father tried to reassure her with murmured comforts, as he had when she was a child. Her brain remembered the comfort from a long time ago, and she leaned back into the man that held her.

"Where are we?" She asked again, she seemed more alert with every word that she spoke.

"I don't know...I was hoping you could tell me." He tried to laugh, but it was very obviously forced, "I just hope that husband of yours is as good as I think he is."

"He is a very good agent. He'll find us." She leaned back into her father's chest and tried to keep herself calm, and try to establish where they were exactly. She didn't know how they were going to get out of this one. Her thoughts went back to the weeks preceding this moment, and she turned to her father in shock:

"Where have you been? What happened at my apartment?"

"I've been here, Tempe, locked in this basement for weeks now. The sonovabitch got the upper hand on me and knocked me out. I've never been had like that before. He really hurt my pride..."

"I really think that your pride being hurt is the least of our worries right now." Brennan sat up slightly, and turned to look fully at her father, "Tell me. What happened that night, the FBI thinks that you killed three people and burned the building down."

In the dim light, she could see that his face flinched. He looked pale, and he had lost weight. She took a second to glance around the small room, it was square and concrete and a door was the only fixture not made of concrete. There was no window, and the only light came from a hanging bulb in the middle of the ceiling. It flickered occasionally.

He spent the next while telling her his version of the events of that night.

He had come back to her apartment after having dinner with Booth's grandfather. The two had really hit it off at the wedding, and had become fast friends. Brennan could understand. She was quite smitten with the Grandfather herself. When he arrived back at her place, he found the door was open and when he entered the apartment, he discovered a dead man on the couch. Just lying there. He went further into the flat and found the dead couple posed in the bed. She interrupted his story at that point.

"So, you didn't kill anybody? They were already dead?" She seemed relieved.

"Yes, I found them there, already dead. I noticed the couple had an obvious similarity to you and Booth, and I started to panic. This was clearly a set up to make it look like you guys were dead; I didn't know what the hell was going on. I thought I should find a way to find you guys and warn you. There was a gas can on the counter, I grabbed it, and in the heat of the moment, and fearing for your lives, I thought it would be a good idea to fake your deaths. You know, so you guys could hide out somewhere until whoever did this could be found. I sprinkled gas all over your living room."

Brennan followed the story so far, but only some of her questions had been answered. Who was trying to fake their deaths? And why? Her father continued,

"I was about to light a match, when this guy bursts in through the front door, sees me and takes off running. I chased him for awhile, but he gave me the slip in an alley behind the building, He must have doubled back and went back up to your place, because the building was on fire a minute later, and in the commotion I went back outside, and Boom, thunk on the head, and I wake up here."

"How did the FBI find the gas can with your fingerprints on it in a garbage bin outside?" His daughter looked calm, he was surprised. His heart was racing just telling the story.

"I don't know... I left it in the living room when I chased the guy."

"What did this man look like, did you get a description?

The door to the room opened and Brennan, for the first time, looked into the eyes of the man who had her captive. Max looked from the man to his daughter and said,

"Yeah, he looks a lot like this guy."

The man who had entered the room, flicked his eyes quickly at Max, and then focused all of his attention on Temperance. His eyes were demented.

"You can call me Gus. It's a pleasure to finally meet you Doctor Brennan..."

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Booth and the squints spent the entire night trying to find out anything about what had happened to Brennan. There wasn't much to work with. Booth had been the last one to see her, about ten feet from her car, and then she seemingly vanished.

Booth and Hodgins went back to the scene and tried to find anything useful, but there was nothing to be found. Her car was gone, and there was no sign of a struggle. Booth didn't know if he was relieved by that or not. The ride back to the Jeffersonian was awkward. Hodgins knew that the man driving beside him was on the edge. His anger was brewing with each moment that passed, and the bug guy was afraid of what would happen when it was released. He tried words of comfort.

"We'll find her Booth, they'll both be okay." His words were encompassed by the silence, and he made no more effort to speak.

Back at the lab, the squints and Booth had gathered in Brennan's office to see if there was anything that they hadn't thought of. The FBI had sent additional Special Agents to help. Booth was grateful. The entire lab had been set up as home base for the search for the missing Doctor Brennan. He sat in her chair, behind her desk, and turned over a small figurine of a smurf in his hands. His eyes were far away, but they snapped to attention when an Agent came to the door and asked to speak to Booth in private. He left the office with the other man, and all the remaining squints looked at each other in worry.

Booth poked his head back in the office a minute later and told them he had to go; they had found her cell phone. He would call if they discovered any new information, and that they should call if the same applied.

Angela, Cam, Hodgins and Wendell started to brainstorm if any of them had seen anything suspicious lately. One by one, they all remembered seeing a man with white hair at some point in the last months, since the fire at Brennan's apartment. Angela pulled out a sketch pad and a pencil, and before long they had a composite sketch of the man, who had been seen in various locations. She placed it on the desk, and they all stood around and looked at it. The man in the sketch was definitely the one they had seen. Hodgins recognized him from somewhere else, but couldn't quite place from where. Angela said out loud,

"What a creepy guy." The other squints agreed.

At that moment, Doctor Sweets entered the room and joined the crowd gathered around the desk. He had just been updated on the situation by an FBI agent in the hall. He looked at the drawing for about fifteen seconds and then gasped. He recognized the man.

"Oh crap." Those were the words that came out of his mouth, and he had the attention of everyone in the room.

"I know this guy. Doctor Brennan is in serious danger."

Everyone looked at him and saw how serious he was. Cam reached for the phone to call Booth back to the lab.


	11. Back to the end

Chapter Eleven

Sweets waited until Booth was back at the lab before he explained his knowledge of the man in the drawing. He had the attention of everyone, but he refused to make eye contact with Booth. The man looked too calm right now. This was not healthy.

"This is Augustus Clark; he's a patient of mine." Hodgins interrupted him,

"That's where I know this guy. It's Gus Clark. His family is more loaded than mine! I remember him now from social events that my parents dragged me to when I was young. Something happened to this guy when he was younger, he kind of went crazy. No one really knew what did it to him, but his hair turned white from some shock. Last I heard, he inherited his father's estate a couple of years ago, and went completely nuts. I haven't seen him for years, other than lurking outside of the diner one day..."

Booth shut his eyes and his head dropped. Great. The man who had possibly taken his wife was a nut job with unlimited money. Just great. He felt a hand on his arm and he looked up to see Angela giving him a sympathetic look. She leaned close to him and whispered,

"Booth, we've got to find this guy. I'm really worried." He nodded and gave his attention back to Sweets, who was continuing with his story,

"Anyway, I've been treating him for about six months now. The FBI wanted to keep an eye on this guy, with his influence in the community, and his wealth, and his madness; they just wanted to know where he was, and what he was thinking." Booth interrupted this time.

"And what was he thinking exactly there, Sweets." The look on Booth's face terrified Sweets, but he knew he couldn't refrain from telling them what he knew.

"Well, awhile ago, Gus wanted to have a baby, but he didn't want his flawed genetic code to be passed on to his offspring, so he and his wife were trying to adopt. He was begging me to sign a psychological evaluation form so that they could qualify at an adoption agency, but frankly, I was hesitant. He stopped talking about it months ago, and I kind of forgot about the whole thing. I guess I thought he had too." Booth interrupted again,

"This guy is married... to whom?"

"Some paranoid schizophrenic he met in a psyche ward somewhere. I met her once, but she was freaking crazy."

Sweets realized just a moment too late that his words were inappropriate. He looked at Booth and saw the anger flashing in his eyes, and his jaw clenched. The man just stared at the Doctor. He saw the wheels turning quickly in Booth's head, and he braced himself.

"Was this the guy waiting outside your office when Temperance and I met you for that evaluation, where you threatened to separate us? The one just before the wedding?"

The Doctor tried to remain strong, but his voice cracked, there was more.

"Yeah. That was him, but there's something else, he has mentioned Doctor Brennan more than once in recent meetings," Booth's jaw continued to clench, "He seemed to have developed quite a fixation on her...I thought it was just because of her books and her work, I never thought that anything like this would happen."

Everyone in the room waited for the outburst from the FBI agent, but it still didn't happen. Everyone backed up just a little bit though. It was coming.

"Didn't you think to mention this to us before now Sweets? You didn't think that after the fire in her apartment that maybe something was up? Maybe something was not quite right with this guy?" Booth's hands started to curl into fists and then uncurl. Everyone took another small step back. No one was going to stop him if he took a swing at the young Doctor. He didn't.

Sweets quietly said that he was bound by Doctor-patient confidentiality, but he wasn't sure if anyone heard him.

"We've got to find this guy. I'll take some Agents and go for his wife and check out their home. Maybe she isn't as crazy as some might think." Booth walked to the door, and before he signalled some other agents to leave with him, he turned back to Sweets to say something, but the words caught in his throat. He instead just shook his head, and left.

Cam turned to the others as they watched their friend leave the lab.

"Let's see what we can find out about this guy."

They all headed to their respective stations to find out what they could.

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Temperance managed to doze a bit, curled up on the blanket with her father, his arms wrapped around her protectively. Every so often through that night, the door would open and she could tell a flashlight was shone on her face. The crazy man would slam the door as he left. Temperance wondered what he was so impatient for. It's not like they could go anywhere. Every time the man came and left, Max would wrap his arms around her a little tighter.

They had no idea what time it was. There was no natural light, but they both had a pretty good sense that many hours had passed. They slept again.

Temperance awoke with a start and shot up into a sitting position. She gasped, and Max, who still had his arms around her felt the contraction ripple through her body. His heart rate increased drastically.

"Tempe, was that what I think it was?" His voice was high pitched, a little scared.

"I'm pretty sure my water just broke." She seemed very calm, detached almost.

They spent the next hour dealing with the initial stages of labour. Max wondered when their host would make an appearance. He had never yet hoped for Gus' arrival, but this seemed a good a time as any. After a particularly bad contraction, where she had actually cried out, Max decided it was time to face what was going to happen next. He stood up and banged on the door and yelled,

"Gus! Get your ass in here. My daughter needs a doctor!" He could hear the echoing of his pounding, and eventually he heard footsteps running towards the locked door.

Gus unlocked the door, and burst in; his eyes were open wide and showed his anticipation of what was occurring. The baby's arrival was imminent. His plan had worked. Or was working so far. He pushed Max out of the way and approached the woman on the floor. With no consideration for her delicate condition, he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her towards the door. She cried out in pain, but the white haired man kept dragging her. Max followed.

When they were halfway down the hallway outside the room, another man approached them, and Gus pulled a gun out of his waistband and handed it to the other man, who except for the white hair bore a strong familial resemblance to Gus.

"Take this gun and shoot the old man. We don't need him anymore. Meet me back in the old lunchroom when you're done, and we'll have ourselves a baby soon." He kept walking with Temperance in tow, while the other man approached Max, whose eyes went cold and black. He was going to have to think fast to get out of this one.

Gus dragged Temperance into a fairly large room in the middle of the basement of the old warehouse. She noticed that in addition to the door they had entered, there was another door on the opposite side of the room. She made mental note of that, just in case there was some chance to escape. Gus left her in the middle of the room, and went to find something in the abandoned kitchen just off the main room. Brennan thought about making a run for it, but she was overcome by a huge contraction, the worst yet, and she fell to the floor on her knees.

Gus came back from the kitchen, and just looked at her. His eyebrows were quizzical, and he finally asked,

"Is this normal? What's going on?"

"You need to take me to a hospital, the baby is sideways, there's no way I can deliver naturally. The baby will die too, if you don't do something." She had collapsed on the floor, in a fetal position, and Gus just continued to stare at her. He looked over his shoulder, back towards the kitchen, and said to her as he started to walk towards it,

"I'm afraid I don't really care about you, Doctor Brennan, it's only the baby I want."

Despite her pain, she had to know,

"Why do you want this baby so bad? Why me?" Another contraction rocked her. They were getting much closer together, but she didn't know what to expect, this was new to her. She had really hoped for her husband there to talk her through this. Where was he anyway?

"I want your baby because in my opinion, the child is genetically perfect. Not like my crazy gene pool, of which I am the highest achieving one, your baby will have everything. Your brains and your husband's brawn and athleticism. It will be perfect. Perfect for me to mould as my heir, and live in my shadow, it'll be great. You'll see," His brother came in the far door and ran towards Gus, but Gus had a few more words for her, "Actually... no. You won't." He turned back to the other man.

"Is he done?" Gus asked his brother, who had obviously been running for awhile, the brother's eyes looked scared.

"No man, he got away, I took him outside so I didn't have to clean up the mess, and he punched me and ran away, he was running west, but I though you could take the chopper and find him, he can't get far that way."

Gus threw up his hands in disgust, and yelled,

"Do I have to do everything?? He handed his brother a large hunting knife, and one half of the set radios that he had tucked into various pocket in his pants.

"I'll get Max, you get the baby. Ten minutes, brother, and I'll pick you up by the south entrance. TEN MINUTES. Don't play with her, just do it." Gus ran off towards the door, leaving his brother to approach Temperance slowly, with an almost sad look on his face.

She thought it would be a very good time for Booth to show up now as another pain crippled her momentarily.

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Booth was in his car driving back to the Jeffersonian. He had just spent the last hours going through the home of Gus and Mary Clark. It had been very disturbing. The couple in question were nowhere to be found, but their huge home, in one of the pricier areas of D.C. had been well prepared for the arrival of a baby. His baby. A nursery was totally done up, and the entire house had been done up with balloons and streamers and banners, all saying 'congratulations'.

He and two other FBI agents had found Gus' office and were shocked when the room was found to be covered in pictures of Booth and Brennan. Booth pulled down one picture from near the man's desk, and stroked his finger along it. It had been taken the day before the wedding, in Sweets' office. It was a candid shot, taken from slightly behind them. The lighting was perfect for her face, and it showed her looking at him with a look that was clearly love. In the picture his back was to the camera, but his hand was on the small of her back guiding her. He knew he was smiling in the picture, even though he couldn't see his face.

One of the other Agents saw him looking at the photo, and patted his back.

"We'll find them Agent Booth. We'll get this guy." Booth slipped the picture into his pocket.

Finger print analysis of Brennan's abandoned phone, had confirmed their suspicions that Gus Clark had taken his wife. There was another set of prints on the phone, but they were so far unidentified. The FBI lab was working hard on it.

His phone rang; it was already in his hand, so he answered it quickly.

"Booth." His classic answer. The conversation was one sided and short; he ended the call with,

"I'm on my way."

That had been Cam, letting him know that the FBI had found Brennan's car, it had been pushed into the river, but in a very shallow section, and it hadn't submerged. They were in the process of bringing it to the Jeffersonian for analysis and they hoped to have found something when he got there. He drove a little faster. This was something.

He ran all the way from the parking lot into the Jeffersonian, stopping only to swipe his card before running up the steps to the platform. The squints were all just standing there, seeming to do nothing.

"What's going on? What the hell you guys, my wife and child are missing and you are doing nothing about it?" His eyes flashed, and all the squints were shocked. They all looked at Cam to answer him. She did.

"Seeley, the car isn't here yet; we've been waiting for it for over an hour, just a little delay. As soon as it's here, we're all over it. Now, why don't you take a minute to yourself, heaven knows you need it, and we'll call you when we have something." Cam gestured towards Brennan's office, and Booth got the hint. He nodded apology to the squints who he had barked at and made his way down the stairs. No one was mad at him.

He went into his wife's office, and lay down on her couch. He took the picture out of his pocket and held it tightly to his chest. His eyes closed, but not before a small tear trickled down his face. He actually fell asleep.

He didn't know how much time had passed when he sensed someone leaning over him. He opened his eyes to see Cam standing there with a cup of coffee. He took it gratefully, and she gestured out to the platform.

"C'mon Seeley, Hodgins has found something."

Booth walked slowly up the stairs behind Cam, where all the others waited while Hodgins almost bounced with excitement. When Booth had leaned against the railing he gestured for Hodgins to begin.

"Okay. So I did a geo-spectral analysis of some sediment that I found in the car's tires. Turns out, that the sediment was coated in fatty acid methyl ester." He looked around excitedly, but no one really followed him. "Bio-fuel" He looked around again, still nothing.

"Just get to the point Hodgins." Even Cam was slightly frustrated by the man's pausing for drama.

"Okay, look at this," Hodgins turned on a monitor behind him and brought up a screen with a chemical formula in the centre of it. He hit a few buttons and the screen split in half, matching the first chemical compound to a second one. "The Environmental Safety Agency did a study two years ago on every fuel holding facility in the D.C. area. The Bio-fuel we found on the particles in the tires of Doctor Brennan's car, matches exactly to the samples taken in the study from a lot just outside the city. It was shut down about a year ago, for failing to maintain safety practices, and numerous other environmental standards violations. It belongs to a subsidiary holding company of Clark Enterprises. Gus' family company. I'm willing to bet that's where they are.

Everyone took a minute to register the information. Booth stood up, put down his cup of coffee, and asked Hodgins to send a copy of the address to his phone. When Hodgins nodded, Booth flew off the platform and was running towards the entrance, his phone to his ear.

He called for an FBI SWAT team to meet him at the address where Hodgins had determined Brennan's car had been at some point. He had never driven so fast before, and he met the rest of the FBI at the end of the road leading up to the abandoned holding facility. He and the leader of the SWAT team formed a game plan, got back into their cars, and drove towards the warehouse, located in the centre of the facility. He noticed that there was an ambulance, and a fire truck following behind them. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Subtlety might be the key here. He saw a helicopter hovering over the far side of the facility, thinking it was one of theirs, he thought out loud,

"Or not so subtle... that works too."

He heard her screams from the second his car pulled up outside the warehouse.


	12. Agony and joy, in that order

Chapter Twelve

Temperance watched in fear as the man approached her, with the knife in his hand. She tried to fight back, but the pain of the contractions was almost constant now, and she knew the baby would not come without what the man planned to do to her. His task would save the baby's life, but not hers. She decided to try to reason with the man, to save the baby. She conceded herself to her fate.

"What's your name?" Her eyes were wide and filled with pain, but she questioned the man who had now knelt beside her.

"You don't need to know my name." He cut open her shirt revealing her engorged stomach that was wrinkling with the nearly constant contractions. She had to keep him talking,

"Okay, I understand that you have to kill me, but can you promise to save the baby?" He looked intrigued. She continued though her voice was scratchy and barely audible; the tough labour had taken a lot out of her.

She killed a few minutes explaining how to tie off the cord and cut it so the baby wouldn't bleed to death. The survival of her and Booth's child was her only goal now. She told him to wrap the baby in her shirt so that it didn't get cold. He nodded agreement. His knife flashed in the light, and temporarily distracted him. He was further distracted when the radio he had set on the floor crackled, and they both heard Gus yell,

"Get out of there Billy, we've got company. FBI crew bearing down. They'll be there in less than five. Get out Get out Get out!"

Billy plunged the knife into her upper abdomen and she screamed as loud as her strained voice could, hoping that Booth would hear her. At first that's why she screamed, but shortly after that, the pain dulled her conscious thoughts and she screamed in agony.

The knife was raked across her swollen abdomen, and blood poured out, it was coming fast. Her vision blurred and for a second she stopped screaming. She heard a gun fire and then a loud bang. She heard footsteps on the ceiling above her and she tried to scream again, but she was getting very weak, her voice was hoarse. She blacked out momentarily, but was awoken by the sound of her baby crying. It lived. That's all that mattered for now.

Billy wrapped the infant in her shirt that he had cut completely off her, and ran for the door. As he approached it, he heard someone trying the handle, and he turned and ran the other direction as fast as he could. The baby cried. He heard a man yell something, and as he fled out the back door, he heard the front door crash open. The door slammed behind him, and he ran up the stairs to the south door of the warehouse, and got into the helicopter where his brother waited for him. It took off and the brothers smiled at each other. They had done it.

When the door crashed open, Temperance tried to focus her eyes on the man approaching her. She started to recognize him as her Booth. She raised her hand towards him and couldn't help but notice that her hand was covered in blood. She heard him say,

"Tempe honey, talk to me."

"Booth... He took the baby." She was having a hard time staying conscious, but she noticed that her husband took her hand and held it tightly.

"Just hold on, help is here." Her eyes were growing dark and she faded in and out of consciousness.

She woke up briefly as she was being loaded into the ambulance. She saw Booth, standing outside the doors, and wondered why he looked so sad. He had found her. She knew he wouldn't stop looking, and then she faded in to black.

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Booth watched the Doctor approach him and he tried to read his face, but the Doctor gave nothing away.

"Agent Booth, My name is Doctor Weaver and I am in charge of your wife." The doctor shook the hand of the tall FBI agent, and he noticed that the man's hands were trembling.

"How is she...is she okay?" Booth looked at the Doctor with his worried eyes. The Doctor took a deep breath.

"Your wife had lost a tremendous amount of blood, and we are prepping her for surgery right now. There seems to be a major tear in the placenta, it was ripped out of her quite viciously." He felt he could be honest with this man. He saw Booth's eyes close tightly, trying to back the tears up, but all it did was push them out.

"If we can't stop the bleeding, we may have to do a full removal of the uterus." Doctor Weaver made sure that Booth fully grasped this concept. It seemed he did, because pain flashed across his features.

"Do whatever you have to do to save her life. Do it NOW!" The Doctor jumped back, and turned with a nod of his head towards where he was treating Temperance. Booth had finally released a little more of his pent up anger.

That child out there somewhere might be the only one they would ever have. He found the two FBI officers, who had been charged with the task of keeping him informed of the situation with the helicopter crash. No one had found the body of any baby yet, only the pilot. The wreckage was still burning.

Booth approached the front desk and left his cell phone number with the nurse to call him if any news came down about his wife. She smiled at him with sympathy and made the promise. She watched the man walk away, wondering what his story was. He seemed very intense.

Booth told his two escorts to lead him to the crash site. He had to do something. He couldn't just stand there and wait. He had to find his child. He did not believe the baby was dead.

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Seeley saw the smoke before he saw the wreckage. He got out of his vehicle and flashed his badge at the patrolman guarding the perimeter. The young man knew who he was, and looked down as Booth went under the tape and walked further into the crime scene. He hoped they would not find the body of the baby. Agent Booth had always seemed so nice to him.

Booth found a familiar face, working over the blackened remains of a body, still strapped to the pilot's seat. He asked Cam what she knew so far, she looked at him in shock,

"Seeley...you should not be here. This one is way too close to home, don't you think? We can examine the remains. You should be with your wife. How is Doctor Brennan by the way?" The coroner looked at Booth's face and saw his eyes harden a little bit.

"She's in critical condition, and she's in surgery right now. There's nothing I can do there, but maybe here I can help." He seemed in control of himself, so she directed him over to officers who were interviewing witnesses. Before he turned away she said to him,

"Seeley, I'm so sorry. I'll pray for everything to be alright."

Their eyes connected for just a moment, and Booth nodded at her with a furrowed brow. Boy did he hope so.

The next hours were passed by him and the rest of the FBI crew scouring the wreckage for evidence that their baby was in the crash. They had found no remains, except for the pilot, but they had found another body not far away, across a parking lot. The man had been shot three times in the head at point blank range, but was also covered in someone else's blood. Cam was doing a quick test on the blood. She told him there was evidence of amniotic fluid on the man's clothes. This was the first actual evidence that the baby might not have been on the helicopter when it crashed. Booth knew it all along. He noticed a set of tire tracks leaving the scene from where the body lay. He called a team over to collect evidence so they could find make and model of the getaway car.

His phone rang and his heart jumped into his throat. He didn't recognize the number and he answered with a cautious hello.

The voice on the other line told him,

"A couple just walked into a private hanger at the international airport matching the description of Gus Clark and his wife, they had a very small baby with them. I suggest you get there now, they're preparing a plane for take-off!" Booth could tell the person on the other end of the line was trying to disguise his voice.

"Who is this?"

"Someone who has connection with people of the criminal persuasion. Someone who has made friends with these said criminals in case one ever needs to make a quick getaway."

"Max?" Booth caught on very quickly to the implications of the man speaking on the phone.

"Yeah...it's me Booth, just get over there now," he paused briefly, "How's my daughter?"

Booth had so many questions for his father-in-law, but he decided that now wasn't the best time.

"She's really bad Max, I don't know if she's going to make it. Can you meet me at the hangar, I could use some backup." Seeley heard Max saying something about having the entire FBI behind him, but Booth just hung up the phone, and quietly left the scene.

When he was in the vehicle, he turned on his siren and flashers and raced at crazy speeds to the airport. If that plane took off, he would never find their baby.

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Booth pulled up outside the hangar after flashing his badge to the security guard who was manning the entrance gate. Before he could get out of the vehicle, Max's head popped in the window. Booth reached into his glove compartment and pulled out a thirty-eight calibre pistol and handed it Max, who accepted it readily.

"How did you get here so fast Max? I thought I was driving fast."

The older man just looked at him with a straight face.

"You don't stay hidden for fifteen years without making a few contacts along the way that would be willing to do anything for you." Booth looked over Max's shoulder and saw a bright red porche driving away at a very fast pace. He looked back at his wife's father and said,

"Okay Max, here's the story, he's crazy, she's crazier and they have my baby with them. Shoot to kill, but don't take a shot unless you have a clear one. Got it?" The older man nodded, "And if anyone in the FBI asks, you beat me up and stole that gun."

"I beat you up?" Max started to joke but Booth gave him a look that said, don't try it.

The two men went around the back of the building and entered quietly through an unlocked door into the hangar. They still had the surprise factor in their favour. Booth saw the white head first, Gus and his wife were sitting with their backs to him, and he motioned for Max to stay behind him. He heard the baby's whimpers from under the blanket that the woman held close to her chest. His child was so close. He paused about twenty feet behind them and pointed his gun at her. Max continued out of their line of site to approach them from the front. To surround them. Booth waited until he was in position, and said in a loud but calm voice,

"FBI! Put your hands up!"

Both heads turned towards him, and the woman reached under the blanket, pulled out a silver pistol and fired at Booth. She missed, and he took aim at her and fired. It hit her right between the eyes, and she fell off the chair backwards, the baby landing on her chest.

Gus just sat there shocked. He finally looked at Booth and said,

"I guess that's what I get for letting her hold the gun and the baby. That was dumb." The man with the white hair slowly raised his arms in defence, and Max stepped behind him and pointed his gun to the back of the man's head. Max looked at Booth and said,

"Get the baby and get the hell out of here Booth, this is now between me and the man who did this to us all."

Booth was approaching the fallen woman while Max was talking. He saw a tiny arm fly out from the blankets, and his heart stopped. The baby was wrapped in blue blanket and he saw the tiny blue-wrapped head poking through. It was a boy. He and Temperance had a son. Tears came to his eyes. He picked the baby up tenderly and held him to his chest.

"Hey there little man. I'm so happy to meet you." He looked up at Max, who also had a tender look on his face, but his eyes were slightly cold, as he continued to hold the gun to the man's head.

"Seriously Booth, get out of here. This is between me and Gus."

Seeley, with his son in his arms started to walk away, but he turned around one last time to convince Max.

"If you shoot an unarmed man in the back....I can't protect you. The FBI will come after you."

"I don't care Booth. You just have to protect my grandson there, and take him to his mother. Tell Tempe I love her, and I will see you all soon."

The man on his knees spoke up at that moment,

"I suggest that you take his advice Agent Booth. I just set a timer on the explosive device in my bag, and you have about a minute to get out of here."

Seeley could tell it was no lie; he turned around and ran as fast as he could out of the hangar. As the door swung shut behind him he heard a gunshot and as he and the baby jumped into his vehicle the hangar exploded. Pieces of debris hit the windshield, and he sheltered his son with his own body. When the noise stopped, he looked over the baby quickly and then himself. They were both fine. The baby didn't even cry.

He took the first real look at his son, and noticed in passing that he bore a striking resemblance to his mother. That was a good thing. He also noticed in passing that the baby was most definitely a boy. Who knew what those crazies had done to fool him.

"Now, let's go meet your mom, okay bud!" Booth hoped more than anything that she was still there to meet. She had to be. He wrapped the baby tightly in the blanket and drove with one hand to the hospital, his other hand holding the baby tightly to his chest. Very slowly, and very carefully. Very protectively.

When he arrived at the hospital, the baby was snatched out of his hands by Doctors and nurses who needed to examine him, to make sure he was okay, considering the events of his short life thus far.

While his son was being weighed and measured and checked over, Booth hovered. He wasn't going to let this boy out of sight. Possibly ever. Doctor Weaver found him as the baby was being washed. Seeley was proud as his son never shed a tear at the process.

"Ha haa. That's my boy! Loves his baths!" The proud new father turned around with a smile, until he saw Doctor Weaver standing there. His smile faded.

"Agent Booth, will you come with me?"

"Ah...no. You see, I went through a lot today to get our son back, and I am not letting him out of my sight. Just tell me whatever it is you have to tell me." Booth stood with his hands on his hips. He wasn't budging.

"Well, your wife came through the surgery alive, but she did lose a lot of blood. I am afraid we weren't able to save her uterus, there was too much damage. She was haemorrhaging badly from her internal cavity, never mind the cut across her outer abdomen. We saved what we could, and the bleeding is under control. She's still out of it from the anaesthesia, but we think she will recover in time providing there's no infection or other complications. She's a very lucky woman. If you had been even five minutes longer in getting to her, she would have bled out. She would have died."

The doctor saw the man's eyes close at the thought. He turned back to the baby, and pressed his head against the glass wall, the only thing blocking him from his son. Doctor Weaver patted the man on the back and said,

"Agent Booth?"

"Yeah..."

"Congratulations." Seeley never took his eyes off of his new son, the only child he and his wife would have, but answered,

"Thanks Doc. We'll be up in a minute,"


	13. Denoument

Chapter Thirteen

Temperance awoke slowly. Her eyes refused to respond at first, but eventually they opened slowly. She had never felt so weak. Her pupils adjusted to the well lit room. She was in a hospital. She felt a dull ache throughout her body, but nothing like the pain she had felt, lying on that concrete floor, being cut open. Her memories flashed back, and she tried to sit up. There was the pain she remembered. She lay back down and took a few deep breaths.

When she was able to open her eyes again she tried to turn her head. That wasn't so bad. She could handle that. She looked over to the main source of light in the room, the window not far from the bed. It was what was under the window that she focused on.

In a reclining chair, leaned back and sound asleep, was Booth. In his arms, held tightly to his chest was their baby. The baby was dressed in a blue sleeper, and had a light blue knit hat on his head. Tears came to her eyes. It was a boy. Seeley had found the baby. She was so proud, but she felt drowsiness coming over her again. She closed her eyes and drifted off, a smile on her face.

When Booth awoke some time later, he noticed that smile on her face. She was in a slightly different position from when he had fallen asleep. He was thrilled. She had been awake. He adjusted the baby slightly in his arms, and bent over and kissed her forehead. He turned his head towards the door as it opened. A nurse poked her head in,

"Agent Booth, it's time to feed the baby." She whispered it as she held a bottle out to him.

He accepted it without a word and settled back in the chair to feed his son. The baby was perfectly healthy, despite his dramatic entrance into the world. He watched his son closely as he ate, and was lost in thought, when he was startled by her voice.

"That looks good on you Booth." His eyes opened wide and a huge smile found its way onto his face. Their eyes met and she smiled weakly back at him.

"It's boy Temperance! He looks just like you. He's beautiful..." His eyes never left hers, but hers went to the baby in his arms.

"I gathered that from the blue sleeper. How is he?" She looked so weak and pale, but she was alert. Booth felt some of his worry fade away.

"He's perfect Tempe. Everything is going to be just fine, how are you feeling?" His face now revealed his concern.

"I have felt better, I must admit, but now, that I know you and the baby are safe. I feel a lot better."

"Yeah. My sentiments exactly."

She asked him then how he had found the baby, and he filled her in on the entire story from the time she was kidnapped until her awakening moments ago. They talked about Max, and everything he had done, and when she asked her husband if he thought her father had made it out of the hangar before it exploded, he looked at her for a minute and said he hoped so. He really did. If Max was still alive, he was on the run again, but this time neither he nor his wife held a grudge. They owed him a lot. Everything in fact.

When the baby had finished eating, Booth carried him carefully over to his mother, but she was still too weak to hold him. She just stared at her son, and let the tears fall.

"He really is a miracle isn't he Booth?"

Booth just kissed her on the temple and then kissed the baby, and as she drifted off to sleep again, he said,

"We really need to pick a name now Tempe, I have one you might like, but we'll talk about it when you wake up."

Her last words before she drifted off were,

"Please don't sign Ghandi to the birth certificate... I'll beat you up..." Booth just laughed and sat back down in the chair, with their son tucked under his chin.

He hadn't come down from the anxiety rush of the last few days, but he was truly optimistic for the first time. He relaxed in the chair, but his phone rang, and the baby started to cry. He would have to get used to having a young baby around again. He looked at his wife, she still slept, and he adjusted the baby and answered the phone as he walked into the hallway.

"Hey Gramps...how are you... yes, you do hear a baby crying... yeah...it was a boy...yes, you did tell me that..." He continued the conversation as he walked down the hall. The newest Booth fell asleep in his father's arms, and his father smiled down at him.

He looked up to see every one of the Squints at the end of the hall. They were all smiling at him, looking thrilled and relieved. He walked towards them, ending his phone call, and introduced everyone to the newest member of the family.

Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxox

When Temperance awoke later, she still felt the dull ache through her body, but she somehow felt better. Less groggy, more relaxed somehow. In her mind she knew everything was all right. Her body hurt though. That would heal with time. She was glad her heart didn't have to heal. She looked over to the chair, expecting to find Booth, but instead looked into the teary eyes of her best friend.

Angela stood up and walked over to her and gave her the biggest hug that she could, despite the prone position that Temperance was in. The artist cried in her hair for awhile. Overcome, finally, with the emotions of the last few days. Brennan tried to console her; she told her friend that she was just fine. Everything was just fine, but Angela cried still. When she finally had control of herself, Brennan asked her,

"Have you seen the baby yet?" Angela stood up straight and dried her eyes.

"Yeah Sweetie, he's the most precious thing I've ever laid eyes on. He's absolutely beautiful."

"He is...isn't he?" Brennan's response had no gloating to it, just confidence that her statement was true.

"I'm going to go get your husband; you need to decide on a name for that little boy. So far Booth and Hodgins have picked every name of the starting line-up of the Pittsburgh Steelers. You might want to get your input in...Just a minute..." Angela left the room and a short time later, Booth and the baby came back in.

He just smiled at her. He leaned on the edge of the bed, and put the baby down beside her heavily bandaged torso. She brushed the side of the baby's face tenderly. He did look like her. Her son opened his eyes and looked right at her. He had her blue eyes. Mother and son stared at each other for awhile when Booth finally interrupted the moment.

"So... our little guy here needs a name." Booth had a look in his eyes that his wife could not read.

"What were you thinking Seeley? You said earlier that you had something in mind?" In spite of all his ridiculous suggestions earlier, she sensed he was serious this time.

"Well, remember when I suggested awhile ago that we could name him after Jared, because in spite of the situation, he brought us together finally?" She nodded, but let him continue.

"What if we amend that slightly to include Max too? He's the reason we're all here right now, and I thought that Jax might be a nice name. You know, honour them both." He looked at his wife, and she temporarily closed her eyes. He waited.

"I think that's perfect. Thank you Seeley. Jax Booth, I love it... And you."

He leaned down and kissed her on the lips. Their family was complete.

"I guess we can save Ghandi for the next one," Booth didn't laugh at her joke and she wondered why.

He told her. He was hoping to save the bad news until she was stronger, but he couldn't let her think there would be another baby. Jax would be their only child. She cried and said she was so sorry, and he held her, careful of her wounds and the baby, and convinced her it wasn't her fault. He wondered if she would ever truly believe that. He told her that everything he ever wanted was in this bed right now, and they both cried a little.

Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxo

In two weeks Temperance had recovered enough to go home. Booth was getting worried that her room could hold no more of the flowers and gifts from all the well-wishers. Everyone they knew had stopped by in the last few weeks to offer their congratulations. Almost everyone.

They bundled Jax into his little car seat and made their way to the car. She didn't even ask to drive, and Booth smiled at the memory of all their arguments over the years about that. He hoped there were many more arguments in the years to come.

He set his son securely in the back seat, and helped his wife into the front. She accepted his help easily, for once, as she was still quite stiff and sore. The drive back to their home was uneventful. He drove very slowly, and she teased him about it. He just smiled at her.

When they arrived home, they walked up the steps and found a small gift bag at the top of the stairs. Booth put the baby carrier down and told her to stay back. He carefully approached the bag, and seeing nothing sinister about it, he reached in and pulled out a card. He opened it and read it aloud to his wife.

"Love the name...thank you." That was all it said.

He reached into the bag and pulled out a small blue dolphin figurine. They both knew who had left it there, and they were both relieved. Booth picked their son back up and led her into the flat.

They settled onto the couch, his arms around her, and they just watched their son sleep in the bassinet, both of them were smiling.

All was well.

The end. For now.

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**Author's note:**

I just want to thank everyone who followed this story from the beginning, though it was kind of the end. I am paralyzed by the paradox!!! (heehee)

Your constant reviews made me smile, and I found that I anticipated them. Too cool. Thank you so much. Seriously.

If anyone is interested, I actually wrote two endings to this story, the other one is not so happy, quite tragic in fact. If there is any interest, I can post it separately so you don't have to read it if you don't want to. If you do want to...let me know. I will oblige.

I imagine I can continue this story, though originally I was following spoilers that had been posted for season 4, but now, I admit, I'm just making shit up. I hope you all will continue to encourage me.

Thanks again so very much.

Peace. Xoxox

p.s. Thanks to the original creators of Bones, who don't sue our asses off for posting the stories that we do. I love the originality of everyone. Keep the drive alive...

Gaia


	14. Part two begins

Part 2

Chapter One

Booth ran his hand over the scar on his wife's stomach. He felt the bumps and ridges as his fingers traced along it. He shivered little bit thinking about how she had gotten it. They both still dealt with the aftermath of the horrible circumstances of their son's birth. They both still had nightmares and were grateful when their cries in the dark were comforted by each other. They both usually answered their son's cries as well. He usually only cried when he was hungry. The baby had no idea yet how he had come into the world. If Booth had his way, his son would never find out.

Temperance eventually awoke, and shivered as the fingers of her husband traced lower and lower on her abdomen. She knew his fingers traced her scar, as it was still terribly sensitive and she could feel every inch of the patterns he drew. It had been six months, and the physical wound had healed as much as it was going to, but the emotional wound was still deep. She never wished the pain she had felt that night on her worst enemy. He sensed that she was awake, and pulled her close to him and cuddled up to her from behind.

"Good morning." He kissed her behind the ear, holding her tightly.

"Good morning. Is Jax up yet, he's probably hungry?" She made no effort to move.

"No, he's not up but something is."

"You didn't bring your gun to bed again did you?" She laughed a little. He kissed her jaw and replied,

"That is definitely not my gun Bones...yours maybe..."

She turned to face him in their bed and smiled at him before she kissed him as hard as she dared. She tested the waters to see if he was in the mood for quick and passionate, or slow and intimate. She was good either way. They hadn't gotten very far when they were stopped by the baby crying at the foot of their bed. They both pulled apart and flipped onto their backs, sighing in frustration. Booth got up to get the baby and brought him back to his mother. He smiled at the look on her face when she made contact with their son. There was a maternal instinct that neither of them had recognized in her until their son was born. Now she glowed. He was so happy that they were in this together.

She sat up slightly in the bed, leaning on the headboard, and brought her son to her chest to nurse. She giggled a little when Booth became awkward. After six months he was still flustered by the most natural thing in the world. She had gotten over teasing him about it, but she still smiled at him. He sat beside her on the bed and leaned back as well, resting on the pillows.

"You know Bones; we really should consider finding a bigger place. Jax needs his own room. If we find the right place, Parker can still have his own room too." He looked at her, but she was smiling down at the baby, and his heart warmed. She was hot. He leaned over and kissed her upper arm.

"You're just afraid that Jax will start to have formative memories of his parents making love. It's proven that children of affectionate parents are more likely to grow up well adjusted." She caught his eye and smiled. He was hot.

"Affection is one thing, but what we do...that's not exactly something I want our son telling his therapist someday."

"Our son will not end up in therapy Booth." She looked at him with a sideways glance. He kissed her bare arm again. "Actually, knowing us, he probably will..." He laughed at her.

They were interrupted by a knock on the door and Parker's little voice heard through the closed door,

"Dad? Are you up? Can I help with the Baby?" Booth jumped out of bed and threw on a pair of pants that were lying on the floor nearby.

"Just a minute bud, your brother's just having his breakfast." Brennan laughed again at him, struggling with the zipper on his pants.

"It's okay if he comes in Seeley, It's very natural."

Booth just gave her a half smile and shook his head slightly. He met his son at the door, and ushered him to the kitchen.

They were both set before a bowl of cereal when Parker asked his dad,

"Do you know what mom says is the most beautiful thing in the world?"

Booth shook his head at his son, but he was curious what he would say.

"She says its breast feeding a baby."

Booth almost choked on the mouthful he was chewing on. He had to change this subject fast.

"Do you want to go the park before I have to take you home to your mom's?" The small boy nodded his head yes.

"Can Jax play football with us?"

"No bud, he's too small still." Parker looked upset, but he was a smart kid.

"He can play when he's bigger though right?"

"Absolutely." Seeley's attention was distracted then, by his wife walking into the room with his other son.

The baby's face lit up when he saw his father and Parker saw the look on his Father's face mirror his little brother's. He was a little jealous. Booth took his son into his lap and made the boy giggle with sloppy kisses on his cheek. He turned back to Parker.

"Is it okay if just you and I go to the park today? Could be fun just the two of us, don't you think?

Parker's face lit back up. All of his jealousy was gone and both the adults in the room noticed his mood change. Temperance kissed her husband on the top of his head as she stole his cup of coffee from the other side.

"You are a very good father Booth."

He winked at her and held his son up to his shoulder as she sipped his coffee.

"Aren't you afraid that coffee will affect your...you know...supply?" He couldn't help but tease her. She wouldn't fall to him so easily though.

"He's our son Booth, he can handle his coffee."

At that moment the little boy spit up all over his father's bare shoulder. He jumped up and told his partner that he would take care of it. He took the boy back into their bedroom leaving her and Parker alone at the table.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while as the boy continued to eat. He finally broke it by asking her,

"Do you know what Bones?"

"No Parker...you have to be more specific?"

"I'm really happy that my dad married you." She kept a straight face. This was not what she was expecting to hear from Seeley's first born.

"Thank you Parker. That's very sweet." She respected both Rebecca and her husband for the good job they had done raising the boy. He really was very sweet.

"My dad is so happy now. Everyone can see it."

"Where did you hear that?" Brennan was curious.

"My mom said it." With that he took his empty bowl to the sink and stopped to give Temperance a kiss on the cheek before he headed off to his bedroom to get dressed and spend the morning in the park with his dad.

Brennan looked around the kitchen with the same intense analysis that she inspected anything. She wandered into the living room and continued her examination of their home. It was kind of small, and Jax and Parker were only going to get bigger. Maybe it was time to move. With the drama that led to her son's birth taking place after the fire in her old apartment, they had back-burnered looking for a home together for the time being. They wanted to settle into parenthood before they made any major decisions. Her thoughts were broken by the Booth boys making their way down the hallway.

Her husband handed her the fresh and clean smiling baby, kissed her on the cheek and left for the day with his older son. She sat and amused the baby with various types of auditory stimulation until he started to drift off to sleep, and as she held him in her arms, she looked down into her own face, she had definitely donated a lot of genes to his physical appearance. She wasn't too vain to admit he was beautiful. When Jax had completely fallen asleep, she put him back in his crib at the foot of their bed, and settled on the couch with her computer. She typed two words into the search engine...

'Real Estate'

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was weeks before they even found something close to what they were looking for. It was she who found it first. She had him convinced within ten minutes of his inspection that this could be made into the perfect home for them and the boys.

She guided him through the rooms, telling him about all her ideas. She saved the best room, in her opinion, for last. The master bedroom was huge and she described where in her mind's eye, everything would go when she was finished decorating. There was a French door leading from the room onto a balcony that overlooked a small stand of woods that was the backyard. It was a beautiful neighbourhood. The nearest house was about an acre away, and all the homes on the road were well maintained, and well kept. He loved it. He was convinced.

He stood on the balcony, Jax bundled up in the baby carrier wound around his body, and saw his boys playing in that backyard in the future. She caught his faraway look and squished the baby between them with a hug. He kissed her very slowly on the lips and eventually they both noticed their son smiling up at them with his big blue eyes and his father's charming smile. They looked back at each other, and Booth said,

"Now, Bones...that is affection." His joking voice made her kiss him again, and she whispered in his ear all the things they could do when this bedroom was theirs. He covered the baby's ears as she spoke.

Two weeks later they had signed the papers and the house was theirs. The move wasn't that difficult, his old apartment really wasn't that big, and she had bought so much stuff brand new, that delivery trucks arrived for a week. It wasn't long before they were settled and she surprised him with a huge flat screen television and all the latest electronics that came with it. She had the room done up while he was away on a case one day, and when he came home disappointed that his son was already fast asleep, she surprised him. Every little thing she did for him made him love her that much more.

He pulled her down onto the couch and convinced her right there how much he loved her. She was very convinced.

They lay together the next morning, in their new bed, staring out the window at the sun coming up. His hand traced the scar on her stomach; she shivered, in a good way. From down the hall, their baby cried, and they both got up to get him out of his bed. His arm was wrapped around her as they walked down the hall and Jax's smile was bigger than the sunbeam that was coming in his window. His mother picked him up and sat down in the rocking chair in the corner to nurse him. Booth looked awkward, but he was getting better. She noticed and directed her smile down to her son who was looking back at her with the same eyes. Her look turned to shock and she cried out in pain.

Booth was instantly at her side asking her what was wrong. She laughed as she felt the inside of Jax's mouth.

"I think someone has grown a tooth. That's strange; I read that a baby is normally very fussy in the days leading up to the arrival of a new tooth. He never made a sound."

"You can't believe everything you read? Sometimes things just happen. Remember that..."

Booth was ready to bolt as he asked her with modest grin,

"Do you want me to kiss it better?" He noticed she blushed. Got her.

Her glare was mock evil and if her arms hadn't been full, something would have been thrown at Seeley. He laughed all the way down to the kitchen to make them some coffee. If he could remember where the coffee pot was.


	15. Ready to go back to work?

Chapter Two

Booth sat behind his desk in his office. His head was in one hand, the other tapped his bobble-head bobby every few seconds. His appointment was late. Well, not really an appointment, but a lunch date with his wife and son. He had told Charlie that it was an appointment so that he could have an hour or two with his wife. He had been crazy busy lately, with case after case. He was beginning to suspect that the cases were somehow related, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was frustrating.

He sensed someone standing in his doorway and looked up expecting to see Brennan, but was surprised to see Charlie standing there with a file in his hand.

"Hey, Agent Booth...got something for you. You're not going to like it. It's another body."

Booth stood up to take the file and as he flipped through the first couple of pages, he heard his son crying, probably as he and his mother stepped off the elevator. He would recognize his son's cry from a mile away. Not that Jax cried very often, but when he did, Booth's heart tweaked a little.

Temperance came into his office with the crying baby. She looked relieved to see him. As soon as the baby saw his father, he stopped crying, and smiled, reaching his arms out to him. Seeley happily took the boy into his arms, and kissed his tear soaked cheek.

"What was all that about?" He asked his son, giving him another squeeze.

His wife sat down in the chair opposite his desk, and dropped the diaper bag to the floor. She looked tired, and maybe a little frustrated.

Charlie made his way to the door, knowing he would be ignored by the two and quietly made his exit. He shook his head to himself. He still couldn't believe that those two had a child, and that they seemed to be dealing very successfully with it too. He heard the Doctor say as he left the office,

"I lost his little blue cow, and he seems to be very upset by that. He's being very irrational about it I think."

"Bones, he's eight months old, he doesn't understand why he can't have the cow, he just knows he can't have the cow... and here..." he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out the missing toy. Their son giggled and smiled and instantly reached for the cow from his father.

"Oh thank god." She seemed very relieved that her son was relieved. "Where was it?"

"I found it in the back of my vehicle. Under a mat." He had brought it into his office knowing he would see them for lunch. His son giggled as they both sat behind the desk. Temperance smiled at them from across it.

"Everything okay?" Seeley asked his wife after she had sat there in silence for awhile. He bounced the baby on his knee, making him laugh, as he waited for her answer.

"Yeah, we're all good. He's just been crying and upset all morning, and I haven't been able to get any work done. I'm way behind schedule on my book, and do you know what Booth?"

"No, what?"

"I don't even really care about the book, I seem to be more concerned about the where-abouts of a small, completely unrealistic toy that I know will make my son smile."

Booth just laughed at her. He reached over and pushed the file that Charlie had just brought towards her. She looked intrigued and reached for it.

"I could use your input with some cases, are you interested?"

"Yeah okay." She flipped the cover open to reveal a few crime scene photos. She was about to comment on the first one when her husband cleared his throat. She looked up and saw her son looking at the photos as well. She got his hint that maybe Jax didn't need to see anything like that quite yet, formative memories and such. She shut the file with an apologetic look, and stood up,

"Let's go eat. I'm starving."

He stood up, shifting his son onto his hip, and met her by the door. He put his other arm around her waist and guided her down the hall and to the elevator. He was, as always, amazed by her ability to look at nasty crime scenes, and still be hungry.

They sat in the diner, a happy little family. Booth sat with son on his knee and tried to get the baby to eat some of the organic baby food that his mother insisted upon. It smelled nasty, but he fed it to his son, he seemed to enjoy it. He was his mother's son in regards to palate as well, Booth smiled to himself. Was there anything of him in the boy? As he thought that, Jax looked up at him and smiled back. A mirror of his own charm smile. That was something. As though his wife could read his mind, she said,

"He definitely inherited your charm smile Booth, can't you see it?" He turned the smile on her, and she laughed.

She felt her heart flutter as she was again smitten by the Booths across the table. She had never envisioned herself in a marriage and with a child, but now she couldn't imagine her life without them. As much as she loved being a mother, her heart ached just a little bit for the Jeffersonian. Her and her husband had both agreed that she would take a year, to stay with their baby, and then they would find alternative arrangements for his care while she went back to work. After eight months though, and as much as she loved her son, she was ready to get back to her work. She only had to convince Booth. He looked stressed enough right now, no need to worry him further today. She would find the right time.

His phone rang from his pocket and he shifted the baby on his lap to reach for it. He answered and spoke quickly, as Jax was trying to take the phone from his hand; Temperance got up from across the table and took their son from him. He mouthed 'thanks' at her and continued the call. His answers were getting shorter and shorter and Temperance had heard that tone before. He was getting pissed off about something. He ended the call, and looked to her.

"I'm sorry Tempe, I've been summoned."

"By whom?" She looked at him questioningly, while trying to keep her son from pulling her necklace off from around her neck.

"There were three more bodies found in the last hour, and every available Agent has to meet in half an hour for a briefing and a profiling. They definitely think it's a serial killer, and he's speeding up the process. I've got to go...I'm sorry."

As tragic as the news was, she was slightly jealous that she wouldn't be involved. The case sounded very interesting. Booth put on his coat, and kissed her good bye and with a kiss on the cheek for his son he left the diner to head back to the Hoover building. She finished her lunch and got the baby ready to go when she remembered that Booth had driven them there. She had no car. He must really be stressed if he forgot something like that. Her phone rang. She was not surprised to see the name flashing on the caller ID. 'Booth'. She answered.

"Tempe, honey, I am so sorry! I'm on my way back to get you." He sounded very sorry.

"Don't worry about it Seeley, I'll call Angela to come get me. It's really no problem." She was surprised herself that she wasn't really mad.

"Are you sure? It's no trouble."

"Go to your meeting Booth, and I'll see you at home later. Anything in particular you'd like for dinner?"

"Yeah... you!" They both laughed as they hung up their respective phones.

Angela was more than happy to come pick her up. They sat for awhile chatting about everything that best friends chat about. Lovers, kids, happiness in their lives and the amount of unidentified bodies stacking up at the Jeffersonian. Maybe just these friends chatted about that.

"Boy, do we miss you there Sweetie. Everyone is scrambling to do the work on one body, before the next comes in. Cam is petrified that we'll miss something important, and she's snapping more than usual at us." Angela didn't miss the calculating look on her friends face, and wondered what it could mean.

"Maybe I could come and help for a few hours here and there. You know, work my way back into things slowly."

"It would be appreciated by everyone, but, Bren, if you're not up to it yet, everyone will understand. You've been through a lot in the last year, don't push yourself too hard." The two locked eyes, both trying to convince the other.

"Physically I'm fine, Ange, I can do the work."

"Yeah, but how are you emotionally?"

"I must admit, I'm still having nightmares of the attack, but they're fading, becoming less frequent. I'm sure in time they'll disappear."

"It helps having a big strong FBI agent in your bed when you wake up though right?" Angela's eyes sparkled.

"It certainly does." Brennan's eyes sparkled back at her friend and then down to her son, now sleeping in her arms. She thought he looked a lot like his father when he slept.

"Let's go talk to Cam then, shall we?" Angela took the baby from Brennan while she put her coat on, and then tucked the sleeping boy into his carrier.

At the Jeffersonian, Cam was almost crying she was so relieved by Doctor Brennan's request to come back to work early. The coroner had been given strict instruction by the FBI and the Big Shots at the Jeffersonian that Brennan would have to undergo a psychological analysis before she was allowed to return to work. When she told the other Doctor of this she saw her eyes flash in anger a little bit.

"Do you mean with Sweets?"

"Yeah. He's the one. I'm sorry, it's not my decision. You understand right?"

"Wow. Booth is not going to be impressed at all." Her glance went down to the baby still sleeping in his carrier.

"Booth still hasn't forgiven Sweets for what happened?"

Everyone knew that Booth blamed Sweets for the events that led up to the near tragedy of his son's birth. He felt that the psychologist should have told him about the crazy white-haired man's interest in his wife and child. As much as Sweets defended himself, by saying he was bound by Doctor-Patient confidentiality, Booth felt that this was one time when his heart should have over-ruled his brain. He should have told them. It would have saved so much heartache, never mind the future children that Booth and Brennan may have had.

"Do you think he should?" Brennan asked her boss.

"I don't even have an opinion on that. Seeley's going to think what Seeley thinks. He's like that."

"I know." Temperance wondered how to deal with this one.

For her to go back to work, they would have to involve the Doctor who Booth very much wanted to slug in the face right now. This was going to be an interesting evening. She was going to have to charm the charmer. Make love to the lover, and in a very general way, get him to not punch Sweets when they had to meet, because she sure as hell wasn't meeting the Doctor by herself.


	16. Sweets meets defeat

Booth and Brennan sat, waiting in their car, outside the Hoover building. They were due to meet with Sweets about five minutes ago, and Seeley was trying to calm down enough to actually meet face to face with the man. He was not thrilled with the situation at all, but he would not deny his wife the only chance she had to go back to work. Heaven knew that they needed her. The work was piling up for the squints with new bodies showing up every day.

Temperance had her hand on Booth's knee, and she was squeezing it reassuringly at regular intervals. It was working. He was calming. She had been shocked at some of the things he had said about the Doctor on their drive from their house. Not, that she disagreed with most of them, but there was some forgiving on his part that didn't seem likely to happen any time soon. She made her move to exit the vehicle, going around to other side to get her son out of his car seat in the back. He got out from behind the steering wheel as she pulled their son into her arms, and the boy giggled. He had such a sweet laugh. Booth pulled her close, before she started walking towards their appointment, and looked her very carefully in the eye.

"You know I love you more than anything right?"

"Of course I do Booth, you tell me all the time, and you show me with increasing passion more and more regularly. This morning for example..." He cut her off,

"Thanks Bones, but I just mean, there are some things I have to say to our good Doctor there, and I don't want you to think less of me when I do." He kissed her on the mouth and the kiss lasted a little longer than either of them originally anticipated. Her hand snaked its way onto his waist and moved upward slowly; slightly untucking his dress shirt, but he caught her hand with his and broke the kiss with a smile.

"Easy Bones, I thought you were trying to calm me down, not rile me up further!"

They grinned at each other and continued to hold hands as they made their way up to the Psychologists office. Jax fell asleep against his mother's shoulder, and Temperance was grateful. Her husband was less likely to scream and yell if he was afraid to wake up the baby.

They opened the door to Sweets' office quietly and the Doctor had his back to them as he worked on his computer. He turned around when the door latch clicked shut.

"Hey you guys, thanks for coming... you brought the baby. That's awesome."

Sweets was trying to get a better glimpse of the boy but he was nestled close to his mother's neck. Brennan handed the baby carefully to Booth, thinking that he wouldn't be able to knock the other man down with the baby in his arms. She was very right, and he saw her ploy, but declined to comment on it. They both sat down and faced the Doctor and they were ready to get this started. Sweets saw that they were down to business and immediately decided that a direct approach was better.

"So, Doctor Brennan. I've been informed that you wish to return to the Jeffersonian. Do you feel that you are ready?"

"Yes."

Her one word answer surprised him a little. This was going to be harder than he thought. He was going to have to work to get her to open up, without offending them somehow.

"Okay... what I meant by that, was, are you ready to leave your son in the care of a stranger while you go back to helping Agent Booth with field work. Have you put behind you the trauma of his birth and are you ready to compartmentalize your home life from your work in order to function at the highest possible level."

"Yes." She replied again.

Sweets shook his head slightly in frustration.

"Okay... Doctor Brennan, you are aware that I have the final say on whether or not you may return to work, right?" She nodded at him, and then looked over to her partner, whose hands were occupied by his sleeping son. They were both slightly relieved. Booth finally spoke up.

"She's not going to kiss your ass Sweets. No one here forgets that your negligence is the reason she suffered that trauma." His voice started to rise by the end of his statement, and the baby stirred against his chest. Brennan sighed. It began.

"Agent Booth, we've been over this, I couldn't tell you anything, even if I had realized that something was up. I couldn't have known that Mr. Clark was so unbalanced."

Booth just looked at him, his eyes flashed slightly with his growing anger.

"It's your job Sweets. You're a psychologist. It's what you do. That's what all those fancy pieces of paper on your wall say, and what you were trained for. You sit there and tell me that you never put together the coincidences of his actions and thoughts to the events that happened?" Booth was now standing up; he handed the baby to Brennan and took another step towards the shrinking Doctor.

"The fire... the fact that Gus saw us in your office shortly before that, the fact he stopped talking about having a baby as he planned to steal ours! You should have seen it happening Sweets! You should have told us!"

"I'm sorry Doctor Brennan; I really should have done more." He pleaded with her with his eyes to help him, but she let her partner handle this. He was doing fine so far.

"Booth! I never really saw it from your perspective before. You're right. It was terrible what happened." The FBI agent stopped his approach, but leaned over Sweets very intimidating.

"Terrible doesn't even come close there, buddy. Can you even imagine what it's like to see the love of your life, the 'one' person you were destined to be with, lying on the floor bleeding to death. Can you imagine what her pain was like, having her child cut out of her without any form of relief, and then have that child taken away without ever holding him or seeing him?"

"No Booth I can't." The Doctor's voice squeaked audibly. Booth wasn't finished. It felt good to finally be venting.

"And then, can you imagine not knowing if that child was even alive. Searching through the burnt out ruins of a helicopter looking for the body of a being that barely got to live before it died. A little miracle created when two people came pretty damn close to becoming one. Think about it Sweets, and then sit here and tell me that we're not dealing with it. That she doesn't deserve to go back to work. The fact that she's even here, thinking about it, is pretty much a miracle. Five minutes longer and neither of them would be sitting over there!" Both men looked at the mother and child sitting on the couch.

Sweets got his first look at the baby and was shocked by his resemblance to his mother. It was uncanny. Brennan decided it was time to defuse the situation.

"You know Booth, I'm quite sure that you would have found Jax eventually. You are a very thorough agent, and you would have searched the entire world for him."

"You're right. I would have. My point is just that I shouldn't have even had to if our little boy-genius here had just put two and two together, I could have protected you. I could have saved you all that pain." He leaned back towards the Doctor, who had come to terms with his sentence.

"If you're going to hit me Agent Booth, I would prefer if you would just do it, and get it over with."

Booth leaned away a little and smiled over to his wife. She looked at him questioningly, eyebrows raised.

"You know what Sweets? I am going to hit you some day, but here's the kicker. I'm not going to tell you when, or where. Someday when you least expect it... Bam!" Booth punched one hand into the other, and Sweets jumped three inches off of his chair. "Then you will know just a little of the shock I felt the night I went home and found my wife and child had been taken. Then we'll be even...No, not actually even, but I hope that you never have to experience what I felt for those days. It didn't have to happen!"

Booth went back to the couch and sat down next to his wife. His eyes were still mad, but his shoulders didn't seem so tensed, and his hands were no longer fists. Sweets decided to push his luck, now that he was pretty sure that he wasn't going to get punched today.

"So, Agent Booth, do you think some of your anger towards me is being manifested by the fact that you were unable to be the protector in this situation. That things got out of your control so quickly?"

Seeley took his son from Temperance and held the baby up so that he was standing on his knees. The little boy giggled at his father and Booth's eyes only left his son's long enough to say to Sweets,

"Don't push your luck pal; we're only here because of her." Sweets wondered about the underlying meaning to that statement, but he was wise and didn't say it out loud. He looked back to Brennan.

"Alrighty then Doctor B., so... you feel then that you are ready to return to work?"

"Yes."

He waited for her to continue but she just sat there looking at him. It was going to be a long afternoon.

He finally got her to open up a little bit about how she was really feeling, but it was a struggle. He felt she was just answering his questions with what he wanted to hear. Whatever she needed to get him to sign the consent form. He knew there was more to it, but he sensed that her confidant was now her husband. She wasn't keeping things bottled up with him around. Sweets was confident that she was dealing with the situation in a healthy way. He was convinced she was able to return to work, but slowly. Gradually work her way up to the level she had been at before. He told her that, and she beamed that wonderful smile that he had not seen in a while. Booth beamed at her, and the baby started to fuss a little bit.

"Bones, I think he might be hungry. Are you still able to, you know..." he gestured at her chest, knowing they had left any baby food in the bag in the car.

"Do you mean breast feed Booth?" She couldn't help but tease his shyness. "Yes, he's not entirely weaned yet." She reached for her son, and started to unbutton her blouse.

"Geez Bones, how about a little puritan modesty hey?... in front of the boy?" He gestured with his head towards the doctor. He got up and took off his jacket and wrapped it around her. She just smiled at him. Booth looked back at Sweets,

"No ogling there Sweets, it's the most natural thing in the world. No need to get all flushed." Sweets knew his cheeks blazed red, but he was unable to do anything about it, so he grinned and bore it.

He was very, very optimistic that these two were just fine. He signed the paper and handed it to Booth, as her arms were occupied.

"You guys seem really happy, off the record, of course." Sweets tried to make small talk, but the two, no, the three, on the couch seemed to have digressed into their own world.

Later that night, after their son had been put safely to bed, they sat on the couch in his media room and pretended to watch some sports highlights, but they were more interested in each other. He kept putting his hands under her shirt, but his hands were very cold and she kept getting mad at his attempts. She finally had him in a wrist lock, and he conceded to her, but held her close to him when she let him go.

"Bones, you know I have to ask this, but, are you sure you're ready to go back to work?"

She leaned her head against his shoulder and spoke very quietly,

"No, but I won't know until I try right?"

"That's my girl!"

His hands crept under her shirt again, but instead of being annoyed, she sat up and took the garment off, and threw it on the floor with a smile at him. His hands were not cold for much longer. No part of him was.


	17. Breakdown

***

_Temperance opened her eyes and it was very dark. She was back in the concrete room, pain ravishing her body, and she tried to scream but there was no sound to reward her efforts. She heard the baby crying but she couldn't move; she was trapped. Panic encompassed her but there was nothing she could do. She suddenly couldn't hear the baby's cries anymore, but she saw the glint of light off the blade of a large knife. The knife was coming at her, and then all she could see was the red of her blood. It was everywhere. The remembered pain, struck her again and this time when she screamed...her voice was loud and piercing._

_***_

Booth shot straight up in bed when his wife's scream woke him from a sound sleep. He instantly had her in his arms, like he had so many times before. He smoothed her hair against her head while she cried. It would only be a few minutes, and she would be awake, the terror of the dream would fade as she fully woke. She had that nightmare again. It had been a while, but apparently, it was still there in her subconscious. When she had stopped crying, she lessened her grip a little bit on her husband. He continued to hold her tight, rocking her like he would their son.

"It's okay... it was only a dream." In the darkness of their room, he couldn't see her face so he tried to use his 'comforting' voice.

"No, Booth, that's the problem. It wasn't a dream. It really happened." Her voice sounded hoarse in the dark.

"It's okay. I got you then, and I got you now. It's all fine. We're all here."

She pulled herself from his tight hug, and made her way out of bed, and to the large French door in their bedroom. She pulled the curtains open and let the moonlight into the room and just stood there, watching the night, trying to forget the dream. She had thought that maybe it had gone; it had been a while since she had it, but, there it was again tonight.

Seeley approached her from behind and wrapped his arms around her thin body. His hands felt the scars on her stomach through the thin, silk nightgown she wore. The constant reminder of the pain she desperately wanted to forget. He wanted to make her forget, but she was a woman who remembered everything. Her amazing brain remembered every moment of her son's birth less than nine months ago. Her rational mind and ability to compartmentalize had failed her here. She was doing her best though, and he was there with her. As much as he tried to convince her that her mind was not beyond the failings of human nature, she refused to believe him, but was frustrated by the fact that she was having trouble moving on from that night.

Eventually she turned to face her husband, and wrapped her arms around him, laying her head on his chest. He rubbed her back, and held her close.

"Thank you Seeley. I am so lucky to have you with me."

"I thought you didn't believe in luck?" He kissed the top of her head as he chuckled.

"Well, since I've known you, I've changed my opinion on the matter of there being some unseen by-product of chance that favours you in a positive way. I guess that could be luck."

He lifted her face towards him, and kissed her ever so gently on the lips.

He was lucky. He thought so every day, but it was nice to hear her say it.

She turned the kiss a little bit more passionate and before he knew it he was being pushed backwards towards their bed. His leg caught the corner of the mattress and he lost his footing, falling backwards. At the last second he caught her and pulled her with him; she landed on top of him and laughed. He thought it was good to hear her laugh like that, so soon after the dream. Earlier, when the memory was newer, it had brought her down all day. She was getting better. He kept the mood light when, in the moonlit room he pulled her close and whispered,

"Be gentle Bones!"

"Only if you are!" They both laughed, but soon other sounds from them filled the room and not one of them was a giggle.

Dawn broke through the window to find them asleep in each other's arms. Satisfied smiles on their dreaming faces.

Their son woke them up with his baby chatter through the monitor linked to his room. Booth smiled at her and kissed her quickly on the cheek before getting up and throwing on the nearest pair of pants that he could find. He left their room to go down the hall to his son's room. Temperance could hear when he entered the baby's room through the monitor. She held it close to her. She loved the interaction between father and his young son. She heard him say,

"Hey little man! Good morning!" Jax giggled his adorable baby giggle, and Booth's laugh followed. Her heart warmed at the sound of her boys laughing.

"Should we go see mama?" The baby chattered again, he was always so happy in the morning. Their voices faded through the monitor as Booth carried his son down the hallway and back into their room. The happy family cuddled and laughed until Jax made his hunger known with a loud squeal. The partners laughed at their son's antics, and Booth got out the bed with his son to give his wife a little while by herself to prepare for her first day of work since shortly after their honeymoon, since the fire that destroyed her old apartment. It had been a while, but she was ready. She thought so anyway.

She showered and dressed and readied herself for the Jeffersonian with familiar ease. She felt good until she went into their kitchen and discovered her son covered in oatmeal, and his father not faring much better. She started to wipe off the face of her son, but Booth told her not to worry about, he was encouraging the boy to be a free-spirited eater. She smiled at him with a sideways glance and let him have this one. They looked like they were having fun.

"So, you're sure this daycare is secure?" She asked Booth, she had asked him a hundred times, and had inspected it herself twice. He answered her patiently; he was as concerned about their son's welfare as she was.

"Yes, Bones. It's a daycare run by and protected by the FBI, there is no safer place for our little guy to be." He smiled a charming smile at her, and she was convinced. She left her husband and her son to the messy free-style breakfast with a kiss for each of them and gathered her things to go to work. On her way out the door her husband surprised her from behind and hugged her tightly.

"What was that for?"

"I just want you to know that I love you, and that I'm proud of you for wanting to help us all out with this case. We need you, but if you don't feel right in any way, don't be brave. Just come home."

"I know Booth." She gave him one of her looks, her eyes rolled a little bit.

"And you are out the door by two thirty or I'm calling the SWAT team to get you and bring you here, and they have bigger guns than you do!"

"I'll see you by three o'clock in your office to pick up Jax. I love you."

"I love you more..."

"Booth, I am getting off that merry-go-round before it even starts." Her eyes flashed with teasing as she turned his phrase back on him.

He winked at her as the crash of a dish hitting the floor was heard from their kitchen and he turned around with a final good-bye and a wish of good luck.

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The first part of the morning went by fairly uneventfully for Doctor Brennan. She found herself falling back into place so easily, that she was shocked that so much time had passed since she had been gone. Everyone welcomed her back with open arms, and questions about remains that hadn't been answered. She was immediately swamped by the back log of bodies that were in Limbo. She did initial observations of five sets of bones that had been found recently, but not yet identified.

Within an hour she had noticed and informed Cam of something that everyone else had missed. The bones all had indicators of injuries caused by of the same style of weapon, if not the same weapon. It wasn't likely the murder weapon, but every skull she inspected had the marks on the parietal bone.

Cam and Brennan looked over one of the skulls when Angela and Hodgins came into the room. Brennan looked at her best friend and noticed the artist had a slightly flushed face, and Hodgins looked guilty about something. Temperance looked at her boss, but Cam had not noticed the arrival of the two. Brennan winked at her friend, and Angela placed her finger on her lips in a silencing gesture. She wondered where the two had come from. She wondered where their new secret 'place' was. The Egyptian artifacts had been moved a while ago.

"Wow...Doctor Brennan, have I mentioned in the last two hours how happy I am that you are back?" Cam looked at the woman, who was examining another skull closely. Without looking up, Brennan replied,

"I think it's a good thing I'm back. I don't know if you would solve this case without me... Look...there it is again."

She held up the fifth skull, and pointed to an indentation on the bone that was hard to see at first and then became more obvious as they stared at it.

"What do you think caused it Doctor B.?" Hodgins picked up another skull and found the mark. He looked at it very closely, but shook his head in frustration.

"I would say that it was spherical, the ranges in diameter vary from skull to skull...frankly, I've never seen anything like this before, but it seems to be present on all of these remains." Her hand swept over the five sets of remains displayed on the tables before them.

"I wonder how many more bodies we can connect with this new evidence." Cam asked everyone in the room, but it seemed the question was rhetorical. Nobody answered.

They all looked around, every one of them sighing with frustration. They had a lot of work ahead of them still. The others were all very grateful to have Doctor Brennan back, even if it was only part time. She was the equivalent of three others.

They were no closer to identifying the bodies, but by linking a common weapon used, they further proved that there was in fact a serial killer out there. Preying on victims that nobody would miss, because the remains before them all did not match any reports of missing persons. Who were these people?

Doctor Brennan carefully examined a skull with magnifying glasses on, and all the squints carefully watched her. Booth had begged them to watch over her while she readjusted to life back at the Jeffersonian. They all thought she seemed to be doing fine, and would report that to Booth the next time he checked in. He had been doing it regularly all day, but he swore to them there would be dire consequences if anyone told her he was checking up on her.

She knew. She had heard the phone ring periodically and then the person who answered it would turn away from her and speak quietly. Every person had asked her at least five times if she was holding up okay. She tried not to be annoyed at first, and found eventually that she was grateful for their concern. She thought she was doing just fine, but by early afternoon, she noticed that she hadn't even thought of her son. She had become so absorbed in examining the bodies, that her mind hadn't had a chance to wander. She wondered to herself what kind of mother would not think of her baby the first day they had been apart since his birth. She was slightly ashamed of herself, and turned towards the drawers at the back of the room, so the other squints wouldn't see the tears in her eyes.

She reached out to open one of the storage drawers, mostly to distract herself from her negative thoughts, and didn't notice the shock white hair on the skull until she had it in her hand. Her breath caught in her throat, and she dropped the skull. It hit the floor and shattered into dozens of pieces. Angela ran to her side.

"Sweetie? What happened?" Angela took hold of her arm and snapped her out of her shock. The tears fell quickly now. Brennan looked at her friend,

"Ange... I think I have to go now."

Temperance freed herself from her friend's grip and ran for the door. Too quickly for anyone to catch her. She was already gone from the hall when everyone gathered by the door.

"What remains were those?" Cam asked Angela, who had been closest to the drawer. The artist shrugged her shoulders and they made their way back across the room to check the file.

It was an unidentified male whose body had been discovered in an Arizona desert. His body was practically mummified by the heat. All that had been determined about him so far was that he was in his mid to late eighties, hence the white hair. His case had been put on the back burner while they dealt with the influx of cases linked to the serial killer. Angela was the first to comment that it was the white hair that had spooked Brennan, though they had all figured it out.

"Do you think she'll be okay?" Hodgins asked the others.

"Well, we should probably call Booth. He'll want to know about this..." Angela was cut off by the man himself, who had just strolled into the room, with his son in his arms.

"Call Booth about what?" His voice suddenly became concerned as he shifted the boy onto his other hip.

"Bren just ran out of here in tears...she found a skull with white hair and it freaked her out. She just left..." Angela filled him in on the events of the last few moments.

The FBI agent started to make his way to the door, but he stopped suddenly and turned back to the squints. His eyes flashed from his son to them, and had a slight look of confusion mixed with the concern. Cam was the first to catch on to his problem. She knew he was nervous to ask.

"Seeley, leave Jax with us, you go find her." The coroner reached out for the baby, and his father handed him over without hesitation.

"Thanks Cam...you guys... there's no one I trust more to watch him." He turned and took off down the hallway; they all heard his footsteps break into a run before he had gone very far.

The three squints left in the room turned their attention to the boy who looked at them with his big blue eyes from Cam's arms. Hodgins had him giggling first, making ridiculous faces from behind Angela's shoulder.

Booth checked everywhere in the lab before he realized that she had left the building. He went back to her office and he tried her cell phone before he made his next move. He heard it ring from her desk drawer. Crap.

He made his way outside, back to his vehicle, and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes wondering where she would go. She was obviously upset. He wracked his brain trying to think of somewhere to try first. He then thought of somewhere that she might go if she needed to talk to somebody.

He started the engine, and made a quick call to Cam to let her know that he might be awhile. The woman assured him to take as long as he needed, Jax would be just fine. He heard his son laughing in the background.


	18. The answer's hair is blowing in the wind

_A/N:_

_this was sort of a shorty... consider it a deleted scene!! The last chapter was getting too long, and this doesn't really tie in with the next, but it's a cute little bit I felt I should add._

_Thanks again, as always, for reading._

_I heart you all!_

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Temperance stood before her mother's grave. She hadn't been there in awhile. So much else had consumed her life lately the she hadn't made to effort to go. She put the flowers down that she had brought. She noticed that other flowers had been brought recently by someone else. There was also a new crystal dolphin figurine; it had a tag tied to it with string. She bent down to pick it up and noticed that the tag said 'For Temperance'. Max had been there, and left her a gift. She slipped it in her pocket and stood back up. She still wasn't very comfortable with talking to her mother, but Booth had said it could make her feel better.

"Well, Mom...universe... whoever is there... It's me. Temperance. If you can hear me, I guess you know that I have a baby now. A little boy. He's such a little miracle. Or at least that's what Booth says anyway. I'm inclined to agree. He's sort of really proof that they might exist." She paused. Not really sure how to approach the subject that she wanted to get off her chest.

"It's just that, you were such a good mom when I was younger, I mean, even though you went out and robbed banks while Russ and I were sleeping, you did so much for us out of love, and I understand now, that when you left later, you also did it out of love, but,"

Temperance paused again. What had made her mother such a good mother? Those were two traits that most people wouldn't chalk up to a high level of maternal skill. She remembered the stories her mother would tell, and the things that she taught her. The picnics as a family. Up until she was fifteen, there were so many good memories. Her parents were there every night, and every morning. What they did in the meantime hadn't bothered her as a child; maybe it shouldn't bother her now. Something to think about.

"I wish I knew how to be a good mother. I love my son, but when I'm at work, I don't know if I'll be able to think of him while I'm handling the remains of human beings. How can I think of his sweet face when I have a child's skull in my hands?"

Maybe someday her son wouldn't approve of her career either. Maybe he would see what she does as no better than robbing banks. How could she guarantee that her son would love her when he was older, as she had with her parents?

"Mom, if you can hear me... even though I'm pretty sure you aren't able to...could you send me an answer to my worries?" Something caught her eye in her peripheral vision. She turned her head,

There stood Booth. He stood, waiting for her to finish, his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, wind blowing his hair a little bit, damn tacky tie. Her heart caught in her throat. He was hot. He was hers; heart and soul, and she got the point of the message. Booth was her answer.

She looked back to the grave briefly and whispered,

"Thank you! I got it!"

She walked towards her husband and he let her come to him. He held his arms out and she leaned into his hug.

"Feel better?"

"Yes Booth, I really do. How did you know where I was? Where's Jax?"

"I stopped by the lab with Jax a little earlier to surprise you, but you had just found the skull, and ran off. I left him with the squints, who knows what they've taught him by now. I just made a lucky guess that you were here. Turns out luck was with me again!" He succeeded in making her smile a little bit. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and they headed back towards the parking lot.

"What happened in there? Are you okay?" They stopped walking when they got to their cars, parked side by side in the parking lot of the cemetery; neither made the move to go anywhere yet.

"I guess I just freaked because I noticed that I hadn't even thought of Jax all morning. What kind of mother does that?" Her eyes were slightly teary again, "And then I had this skull full of chalk white hair in my hand, and so soon after the nightmare last night, I just needed some air I guess."

"Tempe, you have an amazing ability to compartmentalize your work. It makes perfect sense to me, that while you have the bones of an actual person in your hands that you do not want to be thinking about our little boy."

She smiled a little half smile, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"You're right... I'm just afraid that I won't be able to do enough for him. How do I make him love me? He obviously adores you. What do you do differently from me?"

"Bones, he is already madly in love with you. We both are. Don't ever doubt that." He held her by the shoulders with his hands and made her look him in the eye. She saw his honesty and his concern and tried to convince him that she was fine. That she was sorry to have worried him.

He opened her car door for her and she got in. He smiled at her again, and told he would go pick up their son and meet her at home.

She got home long before he did and decide to take a bath to relieve some tension. She soaked away for awhile and finally wrapped herself in a robe and made her way downstairs. She heard her husband and her son in the living room. She stopped on the threshold to watch them.

Booth was sitting on the couch trying to hold his wriggling son. The baby seemed upset about something and no matter what he said; he couldn't get Jax to calm down. He finally held the boy on his lap and faced him. The baby kept slapping at his chest trying to let something be known in his pre-verbal infancy. Seeley had no idea what was up with his son. He'd never acted like this before. He lifted the boy so he was standing on his knees.

"What's going on bud? What do you want?'

The baby very clearly said,

"Mama."

Booth was shocked.

"Holy crow what did you say?"

The baby said again, while slapping at his father's face now,

"Mama!"

Booth was thrilled. He had witnessed his son's first word. He had missed Parker's. He missed Parker's first everything. Jax was a little young, but his mom was so smart and there was a pretty good chance that he had inherited that from her too. He laughed to himself; he wondered if there was any of him in this kid.

Jax squirmed again trying to get off of his father's lap, suddenly he giggled and held his arms out to his mother who had approached quietly from behind the couch, and had heard everything. She had tears flowing down her cheeks as she picked up her son. Her son laid his head on her shoulder and she held him close. The little boy said 'Mama' on more time.

"I think someone missed you today there Bones! I think you've got nothing to worry about." He had tears in his eyes too as he said it. He hoped some of her worries had been dispensed. They had entirely.

"Hey Booth?"

"Yeah?"

"Why does our son have a copious amount of dirt on him?" She brushed him off and dust flew in the air. Booth smiled at her, his eyes warm.

"Hodgins!"

Brennan understood immediately.


	19. Zack's back baby

The squints stood around Doctor Brennan as she examined the remains of the newest body discovered. The body was still quite fleshy and Doctor Saroyan was letting Brennan and her grad student Wendell have the initial examination before she and Hodgins could examine the remains for evidence of murder, and particulates that may have remained. Angela waited patiently for any help that she could offer.

Brennan was examining the skull, looking for the marks that would link this body to all the others already connected to the serial killer, who showed no signs of letting up. Everyone was worried, and the city was in a panic. Whoever was responsible had yet to give them any evidence to his, or her, identity. They were good. In all the bad ways.

Finding the marks on the top of the head, she looked back at Cam with knowing eyes. Cam closed her eyes briefly and sighed.

"Another one. Just great." The coroner looked exhausted. She hated this case. Everyone did. This was the eighteenth body that they had linked to the serial killer.

Only three of the bodies had been identified. The rest sat in Limbo, no closer to having their humanity returned to them. Brennan took only a few more minutes to examine the body and then stepped back to let Cam and Hodgins do their thing. She told them that she would let Booth know about this new case, and they let her know that they would inform her as to when the flesh had been removed and she could have the bones.

As she walked back to her office to call her husband, she thought briefly of her son. She made the conscious effort to block him from her mind while she dealt with human remains, but took every other opportunity to wonder how he was doing at the FBI daycare.

The other morning he had taken his first tentative steps in the kitchen of their house. She knew that any minute he would take off. He was only ten months old, she was proud. He seemed to be way ahead of where all the books said he would be in terms of development. His verbal skills were increasing every day and not long after he had said his first word, and meant it, he added daddy to his list. Booth had been thrilled. The boy now greeted them with his names for them whenever they picked him up. She was amazed daily at how much joy this little boy brought into her life.

She sat at her desk, flipped open her laptop and reached for the phone to call Booth. He answered immediately.

"Bones...Hi... are you near your computer right now?"

"I just sat down at my desk. What's up?"

"Link on to the video feed from the daycare... you've got to see this..."

They both paused the conversation while she connected the live feed to her screen. She immediately saw her husband standing in the middle of the room, with his phone to his ear. He had his suit jacket off, and his sleeves were rolled up.

"I see you... what's going on, is everything okay?" Her voice sounded just a little worried.

"Yeah, watch this!" He looked at the camera, from which he knew she watched from the other end, and stepped back slightly.

She saw her son standing just beyond his father and Booth continued to back up. The little boy followed, his steps slow and awkward, his arms stretched out to maintain his balance. She could see through the slightly grainy picture that his smile lit up the room. He was walking. Booth finally stopped backing up and she saw him click his phone shut and slip it in his pocket, reaching out both of his arms to his son. The little boy toddled over to him and his father picked him up and lifted him high into the air. Brennan could almost hear his laughing, even though her auditory link was disconnected. She was so proud.

She continued to watch the scene for awhile and then remembered why she had called Booth in the first place. She dialled his number again and watched him reach back into his pocket after setting his son down to join the rest of the children who were in the room.

"That was awesome hey? He can walk. He'll be running in no time, and skating soon after that." His voice sounded so light and happy.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Seeley, what if he decides to be an intellectual? What if he's not into sports?" She heard him laugh.

"Maybe he'll be one of those athletes who can actually pass his own mid-terms!" Now she laughed.

She filled him in on the discovery of the newest body. Through the connection, she saw his shoulders slump visibly. He told her that he was on his way, and she watched him kneel next to their son and kiss the boy on the forehead. He stood up, and waved quickly to the camera and left the range of sight.

She continued to watch her son play with the other kids. He looked so small next to them. He was the youngest one there by quite a few months. The special circumstances of their careers made it necessary to leave him with somebody, and she was confident that the FBI daycare was the safest place for him to be. Her thoughts were interrupted by Hodgins knocking at her door. She gestured for him to come in.

"Hey Doctor Brennan, are you busy?" He sat down on the chair opposite her desk.

"No, I was just checking on my son at the daycare. He's walking now, you know." Hodgins heard the pride in her voice. She closed the laptop and gave the man her undivided attention. "Did you guys find anything?"

"No, not yet. I've got some samples I have to analyze and I was just on my way to do that, but I need to talk to you for a second."

Brennan had no idea what this could be about. She looked intrigued. She waited for him to continue.

"Well, the other day I was visiting Zack at the loony bin..."

"That's really not the proper term for where he is."

"I know, but, anyway, he was telling me that you haven't been to see him in a long time. He misses you Doctor B." The man's long lashes framed his blue eyes, and his concern showed through them.

"It's true. I haven't been since before Jax was born. It's so hard to see him like that. It just makes me sad. His brilliant mind wasted behind those locked doors." Her eyes showed her feelings on the matter.

"How do you think he feels? He knows that. He's dying for some stimulation, and I wondered if maybe we could give him some case files to look over, you know, maybe he could help us. Unofficially."

She looked at Hodgins for awhile, and then agreed. She told him that she would stop by in the next few days to see him. She really did miss him, and decided her excuses for not going were not a good enough reason to avoid her former grad student. Hodgins thanked her and made his way from the office, feeling better about his confined friend.

She really did miss Zack, but she was still hurt terribly by his betrayal. His need for logic and rationalization had led him down a path that nobody saw coming. Sweets was still the only one who knew that Zack had not actually killed anybody, but his guilt of his involvement in the death of the lobbyist allowed him to accept his sentence.

Temperance went back to where Cam and Wendell were removing the organs from the body. Cam did it by the book, though the process was becoming terribly redundant. Everyone felt so, but they knew the evidence had to be catalogued perfectly so that when this bastard was found, they could prosecute him properly.

She leaned on the railing out of the way of the other squints and watched them work. She heard the sound of a card being swiped and watched her husband and partner walk up the steps to where they were. As always, he only had eyes for her. He smiled, and acknowledged the others only briefly, before leaning on the railing next to her, their shoulders touching just barely.

"Find out anything yet?" He mostly asked her, but everyone else heard his question.

"We found the indentations on the head, but nothing else conclusively."

"So... he's another victim of our guy?"

"It looks that way."

Booth sighed and briefly touched the fingers of his wife, whose hands were resting on the railing, close to his. She looked at him with her blue eyes, and he felt his heart nudge a little in his chest.

"Have you had lunch yet?"

Her eyes went back to the coroner, who was removing the stomach from the body and it made a huge slopping sound as she dropped it into the metal pan next to the table. She looked back to Booth, and said,

"No, let's go. I'm starving."

He took her hand and led her down the steps; the eyes of all the other squints working followed them. Angela smiled as they shut the door to her office behind them.

"Hmmm... a little nooner do you think?"

"Well, if that's what they're doing, at least they're smart enough not to get caught doing it on camera." Cam noticed Angela's huge blush, and the two women smiled at each other.

The door to her office opened a few moments later, no nooner this time, and the two made for the exit of the lab, his arm around her waist. Angela smiled to herself. It was good to see those two here again. Normal as could be. Happily expressing the feelings that had been denied for so many years. She was a little jealous. She had never thought that her best friend would be married with a kid before her. It looked so good on her. She giggled to herself as she watched Booth open one door for Brennan and she went through the other one anyway. Things were falling back into place.

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Two days later Brennan sat in her car outside of Zack's 'prison'. She found she was actually quite nervous to go inside. She was nervous to know how he was. Courage found her eventually and she made her way through the front door and one of the nurses brought her to a common room. A few other patients were sitting around, doing what crazy people do best. Whatever their delusional minds thought they should. Two people were playing a game of chess, but they didn't seem to be following the proper rules. At least of what Temperance knew of them anyway. She asked the nurse who had guided her in if she would be safe there, and the woman assured her that these were all low risk offenders. Nothing to worry about.

A few minutes passed and she continued to watch the chess game. The two looked like they were enjoying themselves. Finally, she saw Zack approaching her from the door. He looked the same as she remembered. His hair was a little longer and shaggier and he still had the large black gloves on his hands.

Before she realized it, she had stood up and given him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She noticed that he backed away at first, but then let himself be hugged by her. She realized that this was not a place where affection was delivered with innocence. She felt a little bad for him, knowing how much affection she experienced in her life now, and how much she appreciated every touch.

They looked at each other for awhile, each doing their own version of analyzing the other person.

"Thank you for coming Doctor Brennan. It's really good to see you." Zack was the first to speak.

"How are you doing Zack? Are you adapting to life here?" They both sat down at the table, facing each other.

"I suppose I don't have any other choice. I'm alright. I really could use some mental stimulation though. There isn't much for intelligent conversation here." He looked around the room at his peers, and shook his head slightly. "I thought you might bring your son. I would love to meet him."

"Booth and I discussed it, and we decided that one crazy person fixating on our son was enough for one life time. We didn't think it would be safe to bring him here." As she said the words she saw the expression change on his face. "I didn't mean you Zack...I meant them." She nodded to the others in the room.

"I understand. I'm not actually crazy you know. I'm only here because of the plea bargain struck with Caroline Julian." They looked at each for a while.

"I know Zack. We thought you would be happier here." She pushed the files she had brought towards him and his eyes opened wide.

"Are those...?"

"Yes, they're a few of the case files on this new serial killer case. I was hoping you wouldn't mind looking over them and letting either Hodgins or I know if you find anything new. So far, we have little to nothing to go on."

She watched as he read over the first few pages quickly. His eyes had a little glow to them that she noticed had been missing since she got there. He closed the files and looked back at her.

"Thank you. I will help however I can, but I don't get many visitors besides Hodgins and some of my family. Let's use this time, and well, visit. Tell me about your son. I'll bet he's exciting to have around."

Brennan reached into her pocket and pulled out a small picture of Jax and handed it over to Zack. She wouldn't bring the child physically, but she felt this young man was still a member of the family, and he deserved to at least know what the newest member looked like. Zack smiled.

"He looks a lot like you, but I can see Agent Booth in him too." He continued to study the picture, his quick eye picking up the similarities to both parents.

They spent the next hour just talking. Discussing everything that he wanted to know about what had been going on in the last year. Finally a nurse came in and told them all it was time for lunch. Everyone in their delusional state still apparently knew when it was time to eat. Temperance stood up to hug her former grad student again. As she pulled away, she clapped him on the shoulder with an open hand, and he looked at her appreciatively. He leaned close to her to say something.

"Doctor Brennan, I want you to know, I thought Doctor Sweets would have told you, but you don't seem to be aware of it... I didn't actually kill that lobbyist, but I am responsible for the actions that lead to his death. I am where I should be. I don't want you to feel badly for me."

She stared at him in shock. He waved good bye with his gloved hands and she watched him walk towards the door, leading to his dinner. He turned around one last time and smiled at her before he disappeared. She said to herself,

"It seems Doctor Sweets thinks there are a lot of things that I shouldn't know."

She made her way to the door to leave, but she bumped the table where the chess game had been played and a few of the pieces fell to the floor. She picked them up to put them back on the board but she held one of them in her hand a little while longer. There was something about it that she knew was important. She turned the piece over in her hand and she saw the spherical top to the small plastic piece; one of the pawns. The spherical top. The marks on the victim's skulls. It was the same shape. She put the piece between her index finger and the next finger and turned her hand into a fist. A blow to the head by a punch like that could definitely leave those marks on the bone. She had something. She walked a little quicker to her car to go back to the lab and find out for sure if she had just discovered something very important.

She made her way into her office and found her husband sitting behind her desk and everyone else gathered around listening to Doctor Sweets give his latest profile on the serial killer. He saw her come in and stopped his profiling.

"Hello, Doctor Brennan, you're just in time, where have you been?" He saw her eyes turn a little cold.

"I've spent the morning with Zack, catching up on a few things." She walked towards the FBI Psychologist and he knew he was in trouble.

Booth and the squints watched in awe as she came close enough to him, drew back her shoulder and her arm and punched him right in the eye. He flew backwards and she turned around and stormed out of the office.

Her husband stood up and followed her from the room, and everyone heard him ask,

"What the HELL was that all about Bones?" The rest of the conversation faded as the two walked further away.

Angela helped Sweets get up and he held his hand to his swelling face.

"Man it's really going to hurt when Booth hits me. She's got quite a right jab there."

The squints didn't know what he meant.


	20. Pawns, literally and figuratively

Chapter Seven...

The Squints who had been left behind in Brennan's office approached the platform cautiously, while the partners stood having a slightly heated discussion. Sweets walked even more cautiously behind everybody else. A lovely shiner was forming on his left eye. As Cam swiped her identity card and the rest of them followed up the stairs, the conversation became more clear.

"Do you know what this means?" Booth asked his wife.

"Yes I do. It means that Zack had been imprisoned for no reason. All this time, he could have been living his life..."

"Not exactly, but he's not guilty of the charges that he's being punished for. We can do something about this. Maybe get his sentence reduced or something. I can call a buddy of mine, who is really good friends with a judge who owes him a favour."

Booth became aware of the rest of the squints approaching him from behind. He turned his head slightly and saw Sweets behind all the others, they made eye contact and he detected just a little bit of fear in the younger man's eyes. He turned back to his wife.

"We'll deal with this..." he glanced at the squints, who were looking at him with confused looks. What was this about Zack? They, other than Sweets, had no idea what this was about, but they had pressing matters to deal with. Temperance had started to tell him something about a chess piece, and he let her continue. She addressed everybody, holding the pawn between the fingers of her left hand in a fist. Her right hand was a little sore.

She explained her theory that the marks on the skulls of the victims could have been caused by a punch to the head by someone who held the chess piece in their hand. Everyone discussed the theory and Angela finally said that she could run a couple of simulations through the Angelator. She could try to determine the size of the person who caused the damage by analyzing the depth of the marks in the bone, and the force required to cause said marks.

As everyone left the platform to find out what they could, there was just a little bit more of a lightness to their steps. This was the first break they'd had in weeks now. Cam turned back to Doctor Brennan before she left the area and said,

"Have I told you lately how glad I am that you're back?" She smiled at the Doctor and then smiled at Booth, who met her eyes with a glow in his. He led his partner by the arm towards the stairs.

"Yes, you have, but it's still nice to hear." The coroner left with a smile on her face. It really was good to have her back. She had been missed.

They had to pass by Sweets, who was waiting to see what other punishment beheld him. Booth and Bones walked right past him, and he flinched visibly. Brennan turned back to him at the last second,

"I'm sorry I punched you in front of everybody Sweets. It was very unprofessional."

"It's okay Doctor Brennan, it was good to see an emotionally charged response from you. It was appropriate, considering the news you learned. I see some of our sessions are paying off." She looked slightly confused.

"No, what I meant was, I shouldn't have punched you in front of everybody, you completely deserved it. I should have waited until we were alone." She smiled at him, and Booth laughed out loud.

She flinched and pulled her hand back from his as her partner tried to hold it as they walked back to her office. Sweets overheard their conversation as they went.

"Sweetheart, did you hurt your hand?" He kissed the sore hand as they walked.

"Booth, don't call me Sweetheart. And yes."

"Sorry Bones, you see, what you have to do, is make sure that your thumb isn't tucked inside your fist when you make contact. Hold your fist like this..." he made sure the Psychologist heard his proper hitting technique and as he glanced back at the Doctor, he saw the man gulp visibly.

Booth closed the office door behind them, cutting off the rest of their conversation from the young man.

Sweets left the Medico-Legal lab to re-analyze his profile of the serial killer and to apply an icepack to his nearly swollen shut eye. This chess aspect, if that's what it was, added a whole new dimension to this killer. Chess was a game of strategy, and he wondered how this would apply to the case.

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Angela's simulation wasn't ready until the next day, and everyone waited for Doctor Brennan to get there. She had been called in from home, having taken the day off, no new bodies had been found. Booth was making everyone laugh with anecdotes about his son, and his love of chocolate pudding. And the fact that he was still scrubbing the dark-brown sticky mess off of their kitchen walls. Perhaps his 'free-style' eating techniques had to be curbed a little.

Brennan walked in, holding the hand of her son as he walked himself proudly beside her. As soon as the little boy saw his father he giggled and Temperance let go of his hand. The little boy stumbled once as he made his way over to Booth, and everyone in the room flinched forward as though to catch him. He caught himself and was soon in the arms of his father.

"Hey there little big man! Are you taking good care of Mommy today?" Booth shot a very loving glance at his wife, and she nodded at him.

"I only have an hour; we have an appointment this afternoon... what did you guys find out?"

Everyone in the room turned their eyes from the little boy, to the holographic image that appeared before them. The first simulation depicted the image of a person hitting another person who was seated in a chair. It seemed like a reasonable occurrence, if it was reasonable to punch another person in the head with a chess piece in hand.

They ran a few more simulations and the evidence seemed to prove that this was very likely what had happened. Angela ran one more scene, which issued a computer-generated likeness of what the suspect might look like in terms of body height and mass. Everyone one of the remains had been struck by this man, or woman. They all stopped to stare for awhile. It wasn't much to go on, but it was a start.

"Guys, there's one more thing that we need to explore. Two of the bodies had marks on the skulls that didn't exactly match the others. Here... look at this..." The artist changed the simulation to show four skulls hovering in the holographic imager. Booth turned his son's head away from the image; it had just gotten a little too scary for his young eyes. So he thought.

Everyone watched as Angela typed on her keypad, and the image played out proving that the first two skulls had been hit with the pawn in someone's fist, but the marks on the other two skulls didn't match. They had been delivered by a similar manner, but the marks weren't the same. Booth was the first to make the connection.

"It's a knight!"

"What's at night?" Bones asked him, confused by his outburst.

"No, Bones, on a chess board, there are sixteen pawns. Those account for all the bodies with those marks. He's moved on to the next step, he's using knights. Two bodies already match that... Angela, can you prove that?"

Angela took a few minutes to enter some new parameters into her program, using the knight as a source of the unknown marks on the two bodies. It was a perfect match. Everyone mumbled in agreement.

"So what does this all mean?" Hodgins asked out loud, picking up on everyone's thoughts.

"It means our suspect is playing a real game of chess with his victims." Booth continued to stare at the images and didn't notice his son had also turned to look at them. The silence was broken by the small boy pointing and laughing at the Angelator's pictures.

"Bones!" Jax said it very clearly and everyone turned to look at him.

Hodgins was the first to laugh out loud, and he looked at the parents.

"Did he really just say that?" His eyes were very amused, as were everyone's. Brennan looked at Booth with a slightly less amused look on her face.

"He's been saying it all morning. I can't imagine where he picked it up?" She still looked at Booth, who had kept a perfectly straight face so far. He shrugged in feigned ignorance.

As she turned back to look at the images, and everyone else continued to laugh at the baby's words, Booth kissed his son on his cheek and held out his hand in a 'high-five' gesture to the boy. The baby slapped his hand, catching on to the newest trick his father had taught him. Booth had been trying to get him to say that to his mother for three days. He laughed to himself.

Brennan made it known that she had to be on her way, and Booth said he would walk her to her car. They said good-bye to the other squints and made their way from the room.

When they had gone, the three left standing there mused about the family. Hodgins made Angela and Cam laugh with his statement.

"I'm already jealous of how many chicks that kid is going to score in college. He's going to be a legend!"

"And if he's any more like his mother, he won't have a clue about how either!" Cam continued the laughter.

They finally got themselves under control and made their way to main area of the lab, where they were greeted by the FBI medical examiners wheeling in another body, wrapped in a bag.

"Oh crap..."

Cam's words summed it up.


	21. Knights, rooks andbishops?

Chapter Eight...

Temperance awoke to darkness. Her hand crept over to where her husband usually slept in their bed, but she only felt the cold of the sheets. She sat up and her eyes adjusted to the darkness. When they had, she left the bed, put on a robe and went in search of her other half. She checked her son's room first and discovered the baby was gone too. She crept down the stairs, and heard the television playing from the room where she saw a light flickering. She quietly entered the room and smiled at what she saw.

Her husband and her son were stretched out on the couch, Seeley on his back, Jax on his chest, and they were both sound asleep. The television played old Looney Tunes cartoons, but she didn't watch them, she watched the Booth boys on the couch. Her heart warmed. She noticed that her son had grown again. He was longer, and filling out, since he had stated walking a month ago, he was quickly shedding his baby chubbiness. His cheeks were still nice and round though, and he had those dimples. His father's smile, which he had very recently discovered would get him anything he wanted from his mother.

Temperance inched closer to the couch and she noticed the familiar breathing pattern of her partner, and knew he wasn't really asleep. She quietly leaned over him and placed her lips on his, and she felt a smile creep onto his lips through hers, but his eyes remained closed. She kissed him a little harder and still he feigned sleep. His eyes finally flew open when she bit his lower lip.

"That's not nice Temperance!" He whispered at her when she leaned back a little, smiling a big beautiful smile at him.

She knelt next to the couch, and stroked her son's sleeping head. His auburn hair was getting quite long. It was starting to curl, especially around his ears and at certain angles; she swore she could see a resemblance to Parker. He had been feeling unwell all day, and Seeley had stayed with him at home, while she went to the Jeffersonian to help try to identify the newest body that had been found. In the last month they had found the proverbial equivalent to all four knights, and today, they had officially identified the third rook. The indentations on the skulls were key in their discoveries.

The serial killer had not let up, but if their chess theory held true, he didn't have many people left to kill. Not that that was any comfort to the squints or the FBI, but they knew the chances were greater all the time that he would give them some kind of clue. The Law of Probability states that that everyone gets caught eventually.

The body yesterday had been identified as the slumlord owner of a crack house, among other buildings. He had been found strangled in an alley down town, not far from the house that he had allowed homeless people to squat in while they shot up their heroin and smoked their crack. He was the owner of his castle. The 'rook'.

Booth and Brennan had made plans to go to the scene of the crime and interview some witnesses the following day, which had turned into the current day. Booth was secretly thrilled when his partner had agreed to come along with him. It would be like old times. The two of them solving the crime together. Her scientific progress and his ability to deal with the human factor. He definitely looked forward to it.

Temperance carefully lifted her son from his father's chest and tried not to wake him. She whispered for her husband to go get some proper sleep; she would sit with Jax while he went to bed. As she settled onto the couch, their son still asleep, though she noticed that his head still felt warm, Booth whispered t her

"There's something else I'd rather do..."

She wasn't really paying attention, and she fell for the line that she had made famous during the initial days of their official courtship,

"What?"

"You, of course." He laughed at the look on her face. Annoyance that she had been caught, and regret that she would not be able to comply. They both heard the congested breathing of their son, sleeping in her arms.

Seeley kissed her on the lips, and made his way upstairs to get a few hours of comfortable sleep, even though he wished he wasn't going to be sleeping alone. He had spent a long day with a sick baby. He admitted to himself that he was tired and was asleep moments after his head hit the pillow. Her pillow. He fell asleep with the smell of her in his nasal passages and a smile. Life was good.

He was awoken early the next morning by the sound of his son giggling from downstairs. He followed the sound into the kitchen and was shocked by the sight he saw. His son and his wife were both covered with chocolate pudding, and they were both laughing at each other. He couldn't believe that she had let the boy get so messy. That was his job. He kissed the boy's chocolaty forehead.

"Are we feeling better today bud?" Booth laughed as the baby pressed his hand to his father's face, leaving a small chocolate handprint.

"Why are you feeding him chocolate for breakfast?" He asked his wife.

"Because he smiled at me with his little charm smile, and I couldn't say no. He hardly ate anything yesterday, and I figured it would be good to get him to eat something."

Booth could not disagree with his wife's logic. The boy really was looking like he was feeling better today. He had barely had any energy yesterday, and had been lethargic through the morning. It was good to see him smile today. Booth stood next to his wife and kissed her neck while she prepared two cups of coffee.

"You're going to spoil him you know." He kept kissing her neck, and she was doing her best to ignore him.

"I think I'm allowed. He's our only child, well, my only child. If I don't spoil him, then whom will I spoil?"

Seeley looked at his wife; those words had not been spoken in months. Only child. He wondered how she really felt about that now that some time had passed. She had been devastated when she first learned that there was too much damage caused by the traumatic birth, and she wouldn't be able to have another baby. Over time, Booth thought she had dealt with it in her own way. She hadn't mentioned it. He looked her carefully in the eye.

"Do you wish we could have another one?" He felt around for her shift in mood.

"Well, I can't... so there's no point dwelling on it right? What's done is done. Besides, I wouldn't trade our little guy for a dozen more." She had stopped preparing the coffee to look at her husband, and her eyes shifted slowly to their son, who was in the process of licking chocolate from his hands.

"We could always look into adoption if we wanted. Or fostering?"

"I don't know Booth. I think I am content with what we have. He brings more joy to me than I could have ever imagined. I don't know if I could share my love for him."

"You share it with me!" Seeley held his wife by the waist, as always amazed by the maternal ability that had appeared with the birth of their son.

"No, Booth, you had it first. You enable me to share it with him. Without you, I wouldn't even know what love is."

He was speechless. His only reply was a soft lingering kiss that she accepted without hesitation. Their son giggled at them and their attention was diverted from each other to the boy. He coughed a little bit, and the look on her face turned from one of tenderness to one of concern.

"Do you think he's okay to leave at the daycare today?" She started to wipe the boys face and hands with a cloth that she grabbed from beside the sink.

"He's our son Bones, he's tough. He'll be fine. Now, let's go catch some bad guys!" He pulled the baby from his high chair and carried him away to get him dressed, leaving his mother to deal with the pudding fiasco. He laughed to himself; it was usually the other way around.

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The partners sat in their SUV in downtown D.C. They were waiting for someone to leave the house that they had under surveillance. The house that belonged to the man found murdered by the serial killer. They really hoped someone living there could give them some insight into what the murdered man could have been involved with prior to his death. They both sat, sipping their coffee, relishing in the fact at how comfortable they felt doing this again. Despite the desperate situation they investigated, they both felt good.

They were discussing how to deal with the Zack situation, Booth argued that while the young man was innocent of the charges that he was serving time for, he was not innocent of committing a crime. They argued over this for some time, Temperance felt that he should be released with time served as his punishment. Her husband explained that's not how the justice system worked. Even though Zack was family, he had still aided and abetted another serial killer. He had to face responsibility for his actions.

The argument was at a stalemate when they saw a man leave the house they watched. He looked both ways before leaving the doorway, and then strode down the street. Booth left the vehicle and Temperance followed behind him. She grabbed his arm and said,

"Shouldn't I have a gun?"

"We're not going to arrest him; we just want to ask him some questions. No guns." His voice was firm.

They followed the man for a couple of blocks, but lost sight of him when he turned into a park. Booth increased his pace and as he entered the park and was stopped cold by what he saw. In the entrance, there was about twenty chess boards set up for people to play the game of strategy in an outdoor setting. The players looked to be an eclectic gathering of homeless people, but there were a few well-dressed men sitting around, enjoying the warm air and the sunshine. He stopped so suddenly that Brennan ran into his back.

She was about to ask him why, when she looked around and saw for herself what had stopped him in his tracks. He turned to her and whispered for her to act casual. There could be witnesses that they didn't want to scare away. He wandered up and down the chess boards, looking for anything or anyone suspicious. Anyone who seemed nervous if they noticed that he looked like a law enforcer. He was wearing a suit, it wasn't as though he had dressed casual, and even then, it wasn't as though either of them looked like they belonged with the homeless people in this park.

Booth came to a particular board, and stopped to watch the game being played. Brennan kept walking past, but kept her ears open to what he was going to do, or what he was going to say. One of the players was a man of the cloth. He wore a casual shirt, but his white collar was visible at the top. Booth felt this would be a good man to start with. His trust in the men of the church had been drilled into his head from a very young age.

"Good afternoon Father. I was wondering if you could help me with something."

"Sure thing. What can I do for you?"

Booth pulled out a computer rendered likeness of the man who had been identified by the crew at the Jeffersonian and handed it over to the man.

"Do you know this guy?

The man in the collar looked at the picture for awhile, and then handed it back to the FBI Agent.

"Yeah, I know this guy. He's one of the slime balls who lets kids shoot up in his house. Dealers come and go from his places all over this neighbourhood, slinging their drugs to whoever will buy them. Did something happen to him?"

Booth eyed the man carefully and he noticed Brennan approach him from his left. The tone in the man's voice exhibited an obvious dislike for the dead man.

"Yes. He was found murdered the other day. Do you know of anyone who would want to cause him harm?" Brennan took the opportunity to join the conversation.

"This neighbourhood is better off without him. There will be some people sleeping better tonight knowing that he is dead."

"Are you one of them?" Brennan kept him going.

The man looked at her with an expression that Booth couldn't read. He was used to other men ogling his wife, but something felt wrong about the way the priest was eyeing her. For a man who had taken a vow of celibacy, this man had a knowing look in his eye. Something didn't feel right.

"I will not mourn his death, if that's what you mean." He continued to look at Brennan with his odd expression. She was obviously uncomfortable, and Booth picked up on this. She was not easily intimidated, and he was nervous when she was. He asked the next question.

"Are you here very often?" The man's strange look now focused on Booth.

"I grew up in this neighbourhood, I come here every day. It's my goal to clean this park up from all this scum and restore it to how it used to be. It used to be beautiful, now look at it..." he gestured towards the homeless people who were trying to look inconspicuous, having realized that Booth was an authority figure.

"I'm sorry... I never asked you your name." Booth had a very bad feeling about this "priest", but he didn't want to let on to his suspicions, so he smiled warmly at the man.

"Father William. Nice to meet you..."

"I am Special Agent Booth, and this here is my partner Doctor Temperance Brennan."

The man supressed the urge to say 'I know', as he stood up to shake their hands, but Booth noticed again the strange way he looked at his partner. Did he imagine it, or did the man's hand linger a little bit too long on hers when they shook. He was probably just being paranoid. This was a man of God. Nothing to worry about. He asked if they could come back and talk to him sometime soon, if they had more questions.

The priest sat back down and said that he would be there any time, and he looked forward to seeing them soon. As they walked away, he muttered to himself,

"I'll see you both very soon."

He flicked the 'King' piece over on the game board, conceding the game to his opponent. For now. He got up to walk away, but kept one of the 'Bishop' pieces tucked tightly in his hand. He had work to do.

He had not anticipated their discovery of him so soon. He wondered what made Agent Booth single him out from everyone in the park as the person he could talk to.

He knew the man was talented, but this... was most unexpected.


	22. Father William's POV

Chapter Nine...

William sat on the bench, trying to ignore the smell of the man sitting across the chess board from him. The old boozer reeked of sweat and cheap wine. And he was taking forever to make a move. He jabbed the chess piece into his thigh in frustration. Wow, that really did hurt. No wonder all those people had cried out so loud when he hit them in the head.

He had places to be. There was a body in his trunk that needed to be dumped before he made his way back to the rectory. The final 'rook'. The piece-of-trash pimp who ran the cathouse on the south side. Owned the building, owned his castle. But now William owned his soul.

The bum across from him finally made his move, and William quickly took his queen. He leaned back to wait for the man to make another move. He knew he would have him in less than ten moves, but he needed to kill another hour or so before the traffic would fade down and he could dump the body. He crossed his legs and noticed a young man walk past in a hurry. He snorted. One of those tweakers from the house down the block. He smiled; that house would be torn down in no time now that the owner was dead.

Shortly after that, his attention was directed towards the entrance to the park and he noticed a good-looking, well-dressed couple walking there. He watched her almost bump into him as he stopped suddenly.

His heart almost stopped. It was them. Agent Booth and Doctor Brennan.

Why were they here? He tried to keep himself from panicking. This was random. There was no possible way they knew who he was. He had been way too careful. There was no way they were that smart.

He tried to control his breathing as Agent Booth walked up the path between all the other chess boards; he didn't even pause at him, though William noticed his passing gaze as he walked.

'Father' William tried to focus on the game in front of him. They weren't looking for him. Or if they were, they didn't know it was himself that they sought. He was the serial killer, the very one responsible for all those deaths, but what they didn't know was how many murders he had really committed. They had not even linked him to those ones yet. He couldn't help but smile just a little bit to himself. And everyone in the world thought Temperance Brennan was so damn smart.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the pair turn around and start walking back towards him. He wasn't out of this yet. Their eyes scanned the faces of the other players. He was convinced; they didn't know what they were looking for. This was so random. He felt a little more confident.

His confidence waivered just a little bit when Agent Booth stopped in front of him. She continued past a little ways, but she was listening, he could tell.

"Good afternoon Father. I was wondering if you could help me with something." The man looked every bit the FBI Agent that he was. William noticed everyone around him start to back away a little bit. Trying to remain un-noticed. He swallowed down a small amount of bile before he answered.

"Sure thing, what can I do for you?"

The FBI agent pulled a picture out of his pocket and held it towards him.

"Do you know this guy?"

He looked at the picture, but tried to keep his face passive. He quickly thought of how much he could reveal.

"Yeah, I know this guy. He's one of the slime balls who lets kids shoot up in his house. Dealers come and go from his places all over this neighbourhood, slinging their drugs to whoever will buy them. Did something happen to him?"

He watched as Doctor Brennan approached her partner from his left. He hadn't seen her this close in a while, and the last time she had been unconscious. He couldn't help but stare into her eyes. She spoke, he hadn't heard her voice in such a long time either, and the last time had been during a phone call,

"Yes. He was found murdered the other day. Do you know of anyone who would want to cause him harm?"

William was slightly captivated by the sound of her voice. He couldn't help but stare at her. His reserve went down being that close to her.

"This neighbourhood is better off without him. There will be some people sleeping better tonight knowing that he is dead."

He noticed then, that Agent Booth was eyeing him closely. He felt sweat on the nape of his neck.

"Are you one of them?" She was obviously trying to keep him talking

He tried not to stare, but she was a very lovely woman. It was going to be a shame to have to kill her. His guard was down. He couldn't lie to her.

"I will not mourn his death, if that's what you mean."

He definitely noticed Agent Booth glaring at him now. The man was very intimidating. He saw something flicker in the tall man's brown eyes, but it was quickly buried again. The FBI Agent took over the conversation.

"Are you here very often?"

William had to remain in control. They were just asking him standard questions, and if he was really a resident of this neighbourhood, he would have a story to tell.

"I grew up in this neighbourhood, I come here every day. It's my goal to clean this park up from all this scum and restore it to how it used to be. It used to be beautiful, now look at it..." he gestured towards the homeless people who were trying to look inconspicuous, but he realized that maybe he was embellishing a little bit too much.

Agent Booth smiled at him.

"I'm sorry... I never asked you your name."

"Father William. Nice to meet you...?" William hoped his priest facade would hold. He hoped that he looked as calm and cool as tried to seem. These two had completely thrown him off his game by their unexpected visit. He remembered to pretend that he had no idea who they were.

"I am Special Agent Booth, and this here is my partner Doctor Temperance Brennan."

He stood up to shake their hands, and he couldn't help but brush his fingers against hers for just a brief moment longer than he should have.

He sat back down, distracted by the closeness of these two to him. They had looked him in the eye; he had never anticipated that. He heard Agent Booth ask if they could come back and talk to him sometime soon, if they had more questions.

He had to focus back on the interrupted chess game to get himself calm.

"I'm here any time. Hope to see you soon." They had no idea just how soon that would be. He had to hurry this process along. They were catching up. His plan had to be stepped up a few weeks, he had to move faster.

He muttered to himself,

"I'll see you both very soon."

The bum looked at him with surprise as he flicked over his king piece on the board, conceding the game.

He waited until they had left the park, and then waited a few more minutes just to be sure. He raced to his car and drove off to fix this unexpected turn of events.

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Booth and Brennan said nothing as they walked back to their vehicle. They were seated and she waited for Booth to start the car, or the conversation, or something. He was staring back at the park, as though waiting for something. She followed his gaze and saw the priest walking down the street very quickly.

Booth started the engine, and followed slowly behind, keeping his distance.

"Booth, what are we doing?"

"I don't know why, but my gut tells me there was something wrong about that priest. He was hiding something. Did you see the way he was looking at you?" Booth looked quickly to his wife.

"I have been told that I have very pleasing attributes to the opposite sex. Maybe he just noticed?"

"Bones, every man notices you, but as a man of God, he should not be so open about it. I don't even think he was really a priest. He's something else."

"So why didn't you take him in for questioning?"

"Because that would have spooked him. I want to follow him, see where he goes." Booth pulled in quickly to a parking spot on the side of the street as they saw the priest get into his car, and take off in the opposite direction that they were travelling.

Booth was on his radio quickly, giving dispatch the description of the car and the licence plate number. He got on his phone and spoke for awhile to someone, posting them on what he had learned, and why this priest should be followed.

He turned around in the middle of the street and followed the priest at a safe distance. The other man was driving very quickly but Booth's trained eye stayed with him. He saw another FBI vehicle pass them, and he slowed back down to reasonable pace. He said into the radio,

"You just passed me Smitty, keep me posted hey?"

"Sure thing Booth, have a good one..." Another voice crackled through the radio, and Temperance looked at her husband questioningly. He looked back at her, and realized that she had lost track of time.

"What are we doing now?" She asked.

"Bones, it's almost five o'clock..."

"So?" She still hadn't caught on.

"There is a certain little man who hasn't seen his parents all day, and I'm sure the staff of the daycare would like to go home at a reasonable hour." He had a sort of half smile on his face when he glanced at her.

"Right." She looked away from him, out the window.

"Did you forget about him today there Bones, all caught up in the chase...you know, working with your devastatingly charming, extremely sexy partner..." He smiled fully now, as he realized that his teasing was alleviating her doubts about her lapse in time judgement.

"Booth. I didn't forget exactly..." She caught on to his teasing, and blushed just a little bit. "I was just distracted by my amazing partner in action, using his intelligence to find the one man in the crowd who might know something."

They grinned at each other and he reached over to hold her hand as he drove back to the Hoover building to pick up their son.

"You married FBI Sweetheart, it's what we do!"

"Don't call me Sweetheart Booth."

He kept his eyes on the road, so she didn't see the laughter flashing in them. He was so thrilled that she was sitting there beside him; it had been an amazing day so far. He and his partner, back in the saddle, as it were, and they had some kind of lead on this priest. Booth was more convinced than ever that this man knew something about the death of the crack-house owner. Hopefully the other Agents could keep track of him.

The two of them walked hand-in hand towards the door of the daycare and were met by their son who practically ran over to see them, crying mama and daddy. Booth picked him up and hugged him, but the little boy pushed himself away from his father.

"NO! Mama..." Jax reached his arms out towards his mother and she took him with a smile. The boy laid his head on her shoulder, with his arms around her neck, "My Bones."

They both laughed, and Seeley kissed his son's cheek and then his wife's. He wrapped one arm around her as they walked back down the hall to the stairs.

"We'll have to learn to share, Jax. She was mine first."

Booth didn't notice his wife roll her eyes. The two workers from the daycare centre kept their laughing in check, until the couple had walked down the hall and into the stairwell. They were always greatly amused by those two.

Booth had to stop in his office for something, and his wife and his son waited patiently while he checked his messages on his voicemail by speaker phone. Anything he heard, he would just tell her anyway.

The first two messages were of no importance, and the third one was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He answered it and spoke to the other person, turning slightly away from the other occupants of his office. He smiled briefly at his son, who was laughing at the bobble-head Bobby, that Temperance kept tapping to amuse her son.

He hung up the phone and looked at her. His face looked suddenly tired.

"What?"

"They lost the tail, Father William got away, but his car was registered to a man reported missing, so they're going to check that out. Hopefully it's something."

Bones felt bad for him. They were back at square one in terms of who this suspect was. Booth reached back over to his desk phone and hit the play button again. Cam had called to ask where they were and could they stop by the Jeffersonian for something, she told him that she had left messages on both his and Doctor Brennan's cell phones as well.

They discussed whether or not to go to the lab now, and they both decided that they needed to get their son home. They had drawn a new line, the line between work and home.

The little man in her arms was way more important to them than the dead one at the Jeffersonian and the strange one they had met at the park.

They went home.

They missed, by minutes, the phone call to his office and the subsequent message left behind...

"TOO BAD THERES NO PRINCE IN THE GAME OF CHESS...YOU TWO ARE ALWAYS RUINING MY FUN."


	23. Check

Chapter Ten

William hung up his phone, pleased with the message that he had just left on Booth's voicemail. Just a little hint that he was coming for them. He knew it would not take them long to trace his call, but he was prepared to deal with it. His plan had been to draw out these murders for a little while longer, but his meeting in the park with Agent Booth and Doctor Brennan had thrown a major kink in his plan. The reign of the King and Queen would end soon. He had the board ready for them, and he would torture their son to make their last moments on earth pure hell.

He was still baffled as to how those two had found that park. He should have known they would come to investigate the murder of the slumlord. He had spent many hours in that park; he enjoyed the chess games with strangers. No one knew who he was, his presence explained by his fake persona as the priest. Just another man of God, trying to save the world.

In his mind, he was saving the world. Eliminating scum, one at a time. The murders had been an elaborate game he had drawn out, with the ultimate ending being the deaths of Booth and Brennan; those two had ruined his perfect record. He had been planning for years his revenge on them, but his plans were thwarted slightly by the conception of their child, and the drama that followed them through her pregnancy and then after the birth of their son, it was hard to get their attention. His plan had taken years to come to fruition, and he wasn't really upset that it would end very soon. He could finally sleep easily at night. He would win.

His thoughts went back to that afternoon. Of all the coincidences that they would walk into that park while he was there. Of course Agent Booth would feel comfortable talking to the priest. He knew of Agent Booth's religious beliefs, but had never realized how it would affect his plans.

His fake priest persona had happened upon him by chance. He had been driving a cab, trying to make some money; his assets had been frozen with the arrest of his wife. She sat quietly in her prison cell and she had never said a word about him to anybody. He was proud of her.

He had picked up a fare one afternoon at the airport.

The man who was his passenger had told him his entire life story, practically anyway; he was transferring from New York to begin his new life as a priest in D.C. He had innocently told William that he was new to the diocese, and no one there knew anything about him. Including what he looked like. He was starting this new life as penitence for some scandal that he had been involved in, and he had quietly been transferred by a Bishop in New York to this new church. When William learned that they had the same first name, he took his opportunity and killed the man, assuming his identity. No one had found that body yet.

The death of the real priest had been the first death in the string of his chess related murders. He knew that a serial killer would spark the interest of the FBI Agent Booth, and bring his wife out of hiding, and back into play. It had worked beautifully. Now they would be dead soon, and his game would be over. He admired himself for his genius in his plan. Now, for the next phase.

He laughed to himself at the irony that Booth's death would take place in a church basement, knowing the man's faith in his religion; he wondered how far he could push him before he broke. He wondered who he would kill first...

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Booth drove to the Jeffersonian with a few different worries on his mind.

His son had been very ill all night, his cold had turned around again and it broke his heart to have to leave him, but his friend Agent Smith had called him early that morning with the news that they had found the real owner of the car that Father William had been driving. His bones lay in a storage bin in the Jeffersonian, up until late that night; he had been identified only as John Doe number seven. Or 'pawn seven' as the squints had referred to him as.

So, Father William could be linked to two of the murders related to the serial killer. He was appalled that a Priest could be responsible for all those deaths. His conviction and faith in his religion clouded his judgement, he should have been more observant at the time of Father William's behaviour at the park. He should have picked up on how the man had no mercy for the slumlord drug dealer, how emotional the man was about the dealings of the dead man.

What he had noticed was the man's interest in his wife. It wasn't jealousy necessarily, but he had felt very nervous about how the man had looked at her. No priest was supposed to look at a woman that way. At least he had picked up on that. They had the first real lead on a suspect since this whole serial killer fiasco had started. It just broke Booth's heart that it was a priest. He hoped more than anything that Father William wasn't really a man of his religion. His faith did not need to be tested by this.

He stopped quickly in his office, just to grab some files on the cases, and noticed in passing that his message light was flashing. He decided he would check his messages later, and made his way down the hall to Smitty's office.

He and the other Agent made a plan to find out who this Father William really was and set their schedule to go a number of different churches in the area to find out what they could. They needed to stop first at the Jeffersonian to ask for the help of a certain forensic artist to help them out with a composite sketch of the man they sought. Booth told Agent Smith that he knew people. People who could help.

It took longer than he thought to get the sketch; the Jeffersonian crew was busy with a new body that had been found that morning.

Cam filled him in on the details with a quick explanation of where the body was found and that they had found the marks on the skull, without a doubt that this was the work of the serial killer. Both of them sighed, and he offered the coroner a sympathetic shoulder to lean on.

Angela finally had some time around mid-day to help him and Smitty with the sketch. Booth described the man as best he could remember, and soon they had a reasonable likeness of the priest from the park. Smitty took one copy of the sketch and Booth took another. Hodgins stopped in to see what they were up to and offered to check a data bank to see if there was any Father William registered to any of the churches in the area. Booth hoped that the man was a fraud, but Hodgins soon discovered that there was a "Father William Mackenzie" registered as a lower ranked member of a church in central D.C. The ID picture that appeared on the screen matched the sketch that Booth held in his hand. His heart sank. He really was a priest.

He and Smitty made their way back to the underground parking lot of the Jeffersonian and prepared to meet at the church, to find out about this Father William from the other members of the clergy who were associated with him by means of their calling.

On his way to his SUV, he noticed that his wife's car was parked in her usual spot, close to the door. He must have missed her in passing. He told Smitty to go ahead without him; he wanted to talk to his wife for a minute, to find out how their son was feeling. He thought it was strange that she would come to work when their son wasn't feeling well. Smitty told him he would meet him outside the church. He wouldn't talk to anyone without him.

Booth made his way back into the Jeffersonian but was interrupted by his phone ringing from his pocket before he got very far.

He answered it...

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Temperance spent the morning with her sick boy. His cold, which had seemed like it was clearing up, had turned bad again in the night, and she had been up with him all night. He was running a fever, and she checked his temperature every half an hour to see if he was getting worse.

She was worried because her son was usually so bubbly, but this morning all he wanted was to be held by her. She was happy to oblige, but she still worried. She couldn't help it. Since his birth she was constantly aware of dangerous scenarios that he could at risk of. That was her job as his mother. To protect him from anything that would cause him harm. She couldn't help but suffer the guilt that she could not protect him from germs and viruses. He coughed a deep chesty cough and she held him a little closer, whispering words of comfort that she remembered her mother had whispered to her when she was young and sick.

Late morning she got a phone call from Cam at the Jeffersonian, begging her to come in for just a little while to do some examinations on the newest body discovered that morning. She was hesitant, but Cam said she was desperate. Wendell had called in sick, and no one else was qualified enough to help examine the remains. Bones finally conceded that an hour or two couldn't hurt. She would take Jax with her; he could sleep in her office. She would be close by.

She packed up everything she would need for her short trip and put the sleeping boy in his car seat. The drive to the Jeffersonian was uneventful.

As she pulled into the parking lot she noticed Booth's SUV parked not far from where she usually parked. She parked the car in her usual spot, and as she got out to get her bags out of the trunk, she never heard the footsteps coming behind her, but she did at the last second, feel the cold prongs of the stun-gun on the back of her neck and heard the sizzle of the electricity before her world went black...

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William sat in the parking lot of the Jeffersonian early in the morning. He suspected that after his message last night to Agent Booth that security would be tight, but he pulled in before the guard was at his post by using the pass card he had stolen days earlier with no problem. He hadn't planned to use it yet, but plans had been slightly changed.

He had waited for her there before. He remembered with a grin, how surprised she had been the first time he had got her. Only for a second though, then she had been unconscious, stunned by the electricity of the overcharged device that he and his wife had modified themselves. His plan had also been slightly modified by the other man, Jack Hodgins, who had come looking for her to tell her something. He had been an added bonus. HE was loaded, where Doctor Brennan was just very wealthy. They could have gotten a lot of money from that ransom. If only that damned Agent Booth hadn't figured out where they were.

The pseudo priest sat in his newly stolen car and waited, and waited and waited. Maybe she wasn't coming to work today. Maybe she was scared. He chuckled to himself.

A while later, he saw Agent Booth and another FBI Agent enter the parking lot. They stood outside their vehicles and spoke quickly before going inside. He thought briefly about going after Booth, but decided it wasn't worth the risk. She would be easier to get. He waited still.

His patience was rewarded some time later when he saw her car pull into the lot. She parked near the door and he got out of his car, the stun-gun in his hand. She wasn't paying any attention to anything else when she opened her trunk. He approached her quietly from behind.

He quickly put the gun to her neck and saw her flinch only briefly before he pulled the trigger and let the electricity flow. When she hit the ground, he pulled a syringe from his pocket and injected the sedative into her leg. That would knock her out for hours.

William picked her up and carried her back to his car and put her in his own trunk. He went quickly back to her car to close the trunk and put the bags back in, and as he did, he noticed the baby's head through the back window, rested against the side of his little seat.

This was unexpected. Why had she brought their son to work with her? He stared in shock for a second. Then, he reacted quickly and took the small boy out of his seat and carried him back to his own car, and put him in the front seat. Jax slept the whole way back to the church, while William thought how fortunate this had turned out to be. He thought that getting hold of the baby would take some work. He could use this turn of events in his favour for sure...against them both. It was too easy now. They would do whatever he wanted to protect their son.

As he approached his destination, he made a phone call to Agent Booth's cell phone. When he heard the man on the other end answer with the word 'Booth', he spoke through the voice modifier in his hand:

"SPECIAL AGENT SEELEY BOOTH...YOUR WIFE AND CHILD HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED...YOU WILL DELIVER YOURSELF TO ME AT SAINT PATRICKS CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THEY WILL BE SPARED. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR...ALERT ANYBODY AND THEY WILL DIE...THIS WILL BE MY LAST COMMUNICATION..."

The stunned silence was the only thing he heard as he hung up the phone.


	24. Check mate

Chapter Eleven

Booth held his phone in his hand. He paused for only a moment while the memories of her kidnapping by the Gravedigger years ago came flooding back. That digitally altered voice through his phone had stopped his heart. The Gravedigger. Hadn't she been caught after she got him and put him in that submarine?

Wasn't Heather Taffet sitting in a prison cell somewhere? Obviously she had not been working alone then. So... what now?

He knew where Saint Patrick's church was. He had one hour to get there. Smitty was already on his way there, having gone ahead to question the priest. He would be waiting outside for Booth to arrive.

Booth turned on his heel and ran towards his vehicle. If the Gravedigger saw the other Agent there, he might assume that Booth had called in reinforcements, and he would likely kill his wife and son.

Yesterday in the park, he had shaken the hand of the Gravedigger. He spoke to the man who had caused so much pain to so many families. Why hadn't he seen through the ruse? He thought to himself, because he had assumed that a priest could not be capable of all those murders. His faith had failed him.

He scanned his wife's car very quickly and saw no signs of any struggle. She might still be okay. If he could get to the church before Father William made any moves he would gladly sacrifice himself to save the lives of Temperance and Jax. His foot went down a little harder on the gas pedal.

As he approached the church, he slowed down a little and checked the clock. It had only taken him twenty minutes to get there, and he wanted to approach the scene cautiously. He had no idea what to expect. As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw Smitty's vehicle parked at the edge, and as he approached on foot, after parking his own vehicle quickly, he saw the silhouette of the man in the driver's side window. Smitty was slumped over the steering wheel and when Booth opened the door, Smitty's body fell out of the front seat. He was too late. Smitty was dead. Booth saw the two burn marks on the back of his neck, where the stun gun had been held for an extended period of time. Damn.

He pulled his gun out of its holster and clicked the safety off. He was going to shoot to kill this sonovabitch. No hesitations, no negotiations. As soon as he saw his shadow, Booth was prepared to fire.

He entered the church cautiously; he went through the front foyer with no sign of the Father William. His gun was held out in front of him, his finger on the trigger.

As he entered the church proper, he started up the aisle, between the pews, he was looking for any sign at all that the man was there with his wife and son. He heard the muffled cry of a baby from further up the aisle. His heart flinched just a little. Even though it was muffled, he would recognize the sound of his son's cry from anywhere. He walked a little faster; his guard went down just a little bit.

Just beyond the altar, he saw a large glass tank; it could have been a large fish tank, with his little boy laying in it. His reserve dropped entirely and he ran forward, towards his son.

He never saw the man standing around the corner and as Booth approached the glass tank, Father William stepped out and fired his tazer at the Agent's back. The two nodes attached to the long wires hit Booth square in the shoulders and the electric charge instantly paralyzed him. He fell to the ground, shaking as the electricity continued to flow.

William approached him with the tazer in one hand, and a syringe in the other. He kicked Booth over so that he was lying on his back; he looked into the man's pain filled eyes and stabbed the needle into his upper leg, administering the sedative that would knock him out for hours.

With the two partners now unconscious, he had time to set the plan in motion that he had for their son.

He dragged Booth by the arms to the basement steps and kicked him down the rest of the way. The unconscious man tumbled down the stairs and William swore he heard something snap. He laughed out loud. That was going to hurt when he regained consciousness, but it wouldn't be the worst pain he would feel before this day was over.

He followed the man down the stairs and continued to drag him to where his wife was bound and unconscious in a small room where meetings were held regarding church business. He pulled Booth up into a chair and tied his feet to the chair legs, and his hands to the armrests in the same fashion as his wife, who was now sitting next to him. Both of their heads drooped to one side as they sat, bound for what awaited them.

"This is too easy!" William said to himself as he left the room to go get their son. They would be out for hours, so he knew he had some time.

He picked the boy up from the glass tank and the baby cried just a little bit. He had some sedative left for Jax, but so far, the baby had slept the whole time. William wondered briefly if there was something wrong with the boy. He noticed his congested breathing, and his lethargy, but didn't really worry about it as he carried the boy to his car, and drove off to complete his plan.

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Temperance was the first one to stir hours later. She slowly became aware of her surroundings and let her still-blurry eyes scan the room. She had no idea what had happened or where she was. Her eye caught the familiar form of her husband to her left and she tried to reach out to him, only to discover that her arms were bound. So were her legs. She shifted in the chair, but her restraints were tight.

"Booth?" She tried to call to him but her voice but dry and scratchy. He didn't move.

She sat calmly for a few minutes, trying to figure out just what the hell had happened. How had both her and her husband been caught this time? Her mind flashed back to her last conscious memory and she remembered being in the parking lot and then feeling the cold prongs of the stun gun on the back of her neck. She gasped.

That was the kidnapping method of the Gravedigger. Had she been caught again? She was sure that Heather Taffet was still sitting silently in her prison cell. Was this a copycat, or had Heather Taffet had an accomplice all those years? Her questions would be answered before long.

Father William entered the room then pushing a television on a moveable cart. He took a minute to plug the television in and turn it on. The screen lit up to reveal a small form in a glass tank. The image was blurry but Temperance didn't know if it was her eyes, or bad reception from the camera that the television was connected to. She recognized the clothes on the small form as the ones she had dressed her son in that morning. Her heart sank when she noticed a hose was connected to the top of the tank, and water was slowly dripping onto her son. It seemed like a very slow drip, but eventually the water would reach a level that would cover their son, drowning him. She finally spoke, startling the man.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" Her voice had regained some strength, though her head still seemed foggy. She must have been drugged.

Father William turned around in shock.

"Well hello there. Glad you're awake. I was starting to get bored. Now the fun can really start!"

"Who are you?" Temperance asked the question again. The man just looked at her.

"We'll wait until our dear friend Agent Booth over there wakes up. I don't want to tell my story twice. It shouldn't be long now...In fact, I know how to speed this up." Temperance was concerned by the grin on the man's face as he left the room.

He came back moments later with a syringe in his hand and he approached Booth.

"What is that?" Brennan asked the man as he approached her husband, concern edging into her voice.

"Pure adrenalin. It should wake him up in seconds."

Temperance watched in horror as William plunged the needle directly into Booth's heart and pushed the plunger. He was awake very nearly instantly.

Booth took a deep breath and shook his head to clear the confusion he felt. He looked to his right and into the deep blue, worried eyes of his partner. He tried to smile, but he was shocked by the terrible pain in his right leg. He grimaced and looked away, only to look into the eyes of the man who held them captive.

"Father William? What the hell is this all about?" Booth's voice couldn't mask the pain he felt.

"You might as well stop calling me "Father'. I'm not really a priest you know."

"I had my suspicions. Why are you pretending to be one?"

"Because when you arrested my wife, all my assets were frozen by the FBI. I had to assume an identity, and the real Father William came along at just the right time."

"Who are you really?" Temperance asked the question.

"Well, I suppose I can tell you, since there's no way you're going to get out of this one to tell anybody." He laughed at them both, and the partners looked at each other, their expressions unreadable. "My real name is William Burton."

Brennan looked at her husband.

"I know that name. When Jared did some 'spring cleaning' on Heather Taffet when you were kidnapped, that was the name of her husband, but the marriage was annulled. We figured she only used his name to rent a storage locker to store all of the Gravedigger paraphernalia." Booth's eyes widened and they both looked back at William.

"Yeah, we annulled the marriage, but we were still together. Bet you guys never expected that there were really two of us?" He laughed at them again. "Did you really think that Heather was able to haul your sorry ass out that window by herself? I thought you guys were so smart."

The partners looked at each other again. Brennan saw the pain in her husband's eyes. She didn't know if was from the physical pain of his obviously broken leg, or the emotional pain of the mention of Jared. William had seen the man flinch at the mention of his brother's name. He decided to pick the scab off of that emotional wound.

"It was really a shame about your brother. He seemed like a good man, but it was because of him, that you were rescued from that Navy ship. He had to die." Booth looked at the Gravedigger.

"He died in a car crash. It was an accident."

"No, that's just what I wanted you to think. I killed him, and put his drunk-ass body in his car and pushed it down a hill. You should have heard the crash when that car hit that lamp post. His body flew right through the front window. It was very entertaining for me."

Booth was silent. He didn't want to believe that this psychopath had killed his brother, but, despite the evil tendencies, this man was a man of his word. He had never considered the possibility that Jared hadn't been killed from the result of drinking and driving. He felt bad for all the thoughts that he had carried of his brother. As much as it broke his heart when his brother died, it was his pain and his sense of desertion that had allowed him and Temperance to speak of their true feelings that night. The night that they finally caught up to their feelings. He had to be grateful for that, if nothing else.

Temperance followed the conversation in silence. Her heart went out to her husband. She knew the burden he carried from his brother's death. He was the protector, and he had always felt that he let his brother down. He had failed to protect him from himself. The ultimate failure in his life. She knew that because of Jared's death, her and Seeley had finally given in to their feelings, and taken their relationship to the next level. Their son had been conceived in those days following Jared's death. For that she was grateful. She was reminded of the situation that their son was in now. Her eyes went back to the television monitor and now that her vision was clear, she noticed something strange about the small figure in the tank.

At that moment, Booth also noticed the monitor for the first time. When he realized what he was looking at, he flipped out and fought violently at the restraints that bound him to the chair.

William just laughed and watched the man struggle. This was going to be great. He would let the two of them watch the baby drown slowly, and then he would take care of them, one at a time. He still debated over who would suffer more watching the other one die first.

When Booth showed no signs of letting up on his fight against the restraints, William pulled the stun gun out of his pocket and walked over to the man. He put the weapon to Booth's temple and fired the gun just briefly. The shock was enough to calm the man, but with the adrenalin running through his system, it was not enough to knock him out. Booth panted in frustration. He looked at his captor and spewed,

"I will kill you for this. You won't get away with this. You'll get what's coming to you..."

William again pressed the stun gun to Booth's temple, but it only fizzled. The battery had died. He shook it and tried again, but nothing happened.

"I'll be right back...don't go anywhere!" He laughed at them as he left the room to get another battery for his device.

The partner's eyes followed him out of the room and when he was gone they looked at each other. There was no hint of any smile from either of them, like there usually was when they glanced at each other.

"I don't know how we're going to get out of this one Tempe." Booth tried to sound optimistic, but his voice cracked a little. "There's no one who knows about this. No one is coming for us."

Their eyes connected for a second longer, and then she looked back to the monitor. Her expression changed as she studied the small form, who was becoming soaked from the dripping water. The baby still hadn't moved and she had to assume that he had been drugged as well. Her eyes narrowed further and her husband wondered what she was studying so intently.

"What is it Temperance? What do you see?"

She answered without moving her eyes from the monitor.

"I don't think that's Jax!"

"Of course it is. I saw him in that tank before Willy there stunned me. It was definitely him...What makes you say that?"

"Because Seeley, I study bones for a living, and I know my son better than anyone except for you. If you look at the length of the upper torso, I'm pretty sure it's longer in that baby than our son. The ratios don't seem right. That baby's arms seem longer too. I really don't think that's him..."

Booth thought for a minute about her theory. He stared at the monitor and because of the bad quality of the video image he couldn't make out the baby's facial features, though he recognized the clothes. Maybe she was right. William was torturing some random baby while his son was somewhere else. He couldn't even imagine what that could mean. Was William going to kill them, after they thought their son was dead, and then raise the boy as his own, everyday revelling in the irony that their son lived? He had no idea of the man's plan.

"When William comes back, don't let on that you know that. We can use this against him."

Temperance finally looked back at him and agreed, with no argument. She wondered whose baby that was in the tank. They had to save him if they could. Some mother out there was missing her baby, and her innate maternal senses went out to that other woman, whoever she was.

William came back into the room just then carrying a number of things in his arms. He set them all down on the table in the room. The first item was a chess board, and he placed the king and the queen pieces in the middle of the board. He then set a knife, a gun and a stun gun in a line on the table. He picked up the knife and walked over to Temperance.

"Now the fun really starts..." He placed the knife to Brennan's throat and slid it just gently along her carotid artery. A small trickle of blood ran down her neck and Booth decided now was a good time for a distraction.

"So... William, don't you think this is too much for you to handle? Can you really do this by yourself? I mean obviously, Heather was the brains of your little operation, I don't think you have the balls to do this by yourself."

He had William's attention.

The man turned to him with a smile.

"I killed all those people without her, I don't need her anymore. This is between us now." Without hesitation he plunged the knife into Seeley's shoulder and twisted the blade. Blood poured from the wound, but Booth's expression never changed. Temperance decided it was her turn for the distraction.

"William, do you know that your chess theory is slightly flawed? Anthropologically speaking, in hierarchical societies, the King and Queen are not the highest level of authority. They are second only to God. He is the ultimate authority."

Booth looked at his wife in surprise. He wondered where she was going with this. William looked at her with loathing in his eyes.

"Yeah well, God isn't here right now is he?" He smirked at them both as he walked back over to the table to put the knife down. He picked up the gun. It was Booth's gun that he had taken from the man after he had been rendered unconscious from the tazer. He went back towards them.

"I was really going to have fun torturing you both, but I think I just decided who's going first." He held the gun to Brennan's forehead and cocked it.

Booth closed his eyes, unable to watch the final moments of her life.

He opened them when he heard the gun fire, and realized that William had turned at the last second and fired at the chess pieces on the table. The queen piece was obliterated by the bullet, and Booth was ever so slightly impressed at the man's aim.

"OPEN YOUR GOD DAMN EYES! I want you to see her brains splatter on the wall!"

Booth looked in his wife's eyes and he saw no fear in them. He was proud of her. She wouldn't give William the satisfaction of seeing her scared in the final moments of her life.

Their eyes stayed connected as William put the gun back to her forehead and cocked it again. She winked at him. Her final gesture of affection. Her eyes closed just briefly as William squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The gun had jammed.

Both partners looked at the man in surprise as he looked at the gun and shook it. He put it to her head again but it jammed a second time.

Suddenly, William dropped the gun, and both of his hands went to his heart, clutching at his chest. He fell to his knees, his eyes opened wide as he struggled to breathe. He gasped, and fell to the floor in front of them. His eyes were opened and the shock of the massive heart attack stayed on his face as he gasped one last time and then was still.

Booth and Brennan stared in shock at the dead man at their feet.

"Booth...Is that what you would call divine intervention?" Her voice was shaky.

Booth looked at her and smiled just a little smile.

"I do believe, my love, that's exactly what that was." He glanced quickly at the crucifix on the wall by the door, and if he could have, he would have crossed himself.

They continued to stare at the dead man in shock and surprise.

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_To be continued...._

_(I tried not to make it too cliffy. I was starting to annoy myself....!!)_


	25. The Great Escape

Chapter Twelve

Booth and Brennan continued to stare at the dead man for some time. Neither of them had any words for what had just happened. She finally found some.

"Booth, we have to get out of here. You said no one was coming, so we better think of something. Do you know where we are?"

Booth continued to stare at William's body, lying on the floor at his feet. The dead man's eyes were open and Booth felt like he was still looking at him. He was captivated by what could have been. It could have been her dead eyes staring at him. He looked up into her very alive and worried eyes and the spell was interrupted by the one she had over him.

"What?" He shook his head, trying to clear some of the shock.

"Do you know where we are?"

"We're in Saint Patrick's church. Probably the basement." He looked at her rather than the dead man. His line of sight went eventually to the monitor, and he saw the tank filling with more water by the minute. The water was up to the baby's ears, and the child still hadn't moved.

"We have to get out of here."

"I know Booth, I just said that." She looked at him, a little worried. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just a little confused right now. It's not every day that one witnesses a miracle."

She stared at him, trying to judge if he had all his wits about him. She looked at his leg and saw the awkward angle in which it was bent. That had to hurt. His shoulder still bled from the stab wound, but he didn't seem to notice that. He was probably still feeling some of the effects of being drugged. He just looked at her. Finally he spoke.

"Are you okay? Your neck is bleeding?" His dark brown eyes showed his concern for her. She was shocked.

"You're the one who is bleeding profusely. C'mon Booth, snap out of it... come back to me here okay?"

He shook his head again, and he seemed to snap a little further out of the shock that threatened to encompass him.

"We can discuss this miracle for hours when we get out of here, but first we have to do something about that baby, and we have to find Jax!"

"Hah... so you admit it was a miracle!" She looked at him but stopped just short of rolling her eyes.

"Booth, at this time, I am willing to admit that I have absolutely no scientific explanation for what happened here. Now... can you reach the knife on the table?"

He smiled at her for a while longer, happy that she had at least partially agreed with him. He would take that for now. He would take that any day.

The knife on the table was close to the edge, and he thought he could grab it with his mouth if he got close enough. She watched as he rocked his chair front to back and eventually got enough momentum to use leverage from his bound arms to rock himself up onto his feet. He cried out as his broken right leg took some of his weight until he could readjust to his left, so his good leg took all the weight. He took a second to make sure he was balanced, and hopped with all his strength towards the table.

Temperance watched in awe at the awkward position her partner maintained while he took three hops towards the table and finally leaned forward and took the knife in his mouth. She could tell he was winded, and now that the knife was in his mouth, he seemed to have trouble catching his breath. He took two hops back towards her, and finally had to spit the knife out into his lap. He let himself back into a sitting position. Most of his energy seemed tapped by his effort.

They now sat face to face, about three feet apart. So close, yet neither of them could reach out to the other. Temperance analyzed the situation, trying to resolve the problem they faced together. She had an idea.

She copied Booth's action by starting to rock her chair front to back. She made her way onto her feet after a few tries, and hopped in the same manner as him and leaned into him to grab the knife off of his lap. It took her two tries to pick up the knife and when she finally had a firm grip on it, she shifted her weight so that she tilted backwards and back into a sitting position. Her left hand that held the knife was only inches from his right hand. She wiggled her fingers and started trying to saw through the tape that bound his hand to the chair.

He ignored the first two times she cut him, but couldn't help the slight yelp when she got him good across the back of his hand. She stopped and leaned back, slightly frustrated by her lack of progress. He sensed her frustration and tried to encourage her, but she snapped at him.

"You know Seeley, so far today I have been shocked, kidnapped, drugged, separated from my sick son, forced to watch a baby drowning, and had a trigger pulled against my head twice. Frankly... my hands are a little shaky."

"I love you." He did his best attempt at his charm smile, and as hard as she tried, she couldn't keep the slight smile off of her face. She went back to work.

Eventually she had frayed the tape enough that with one firm jerk of his arm, he snapped the remaining pieces and his arm was free. He grabbed the knife and cut his other arm free in seconds and seconds after that they were both free of their restraints. She stood up first and went to him to help him up.

He lost his balance when he tried to put weight on his leg, but she was right there beside him to balance him. His added weight didn't seem to throw her off at all. He took the opportunity of their closeness to kiss her firmly on the mouth. She accepted his kiss readily, but they didn't waste a lot of time with sentiment. There was a baby somewhere nearby with the water now approaching his face.

As Brennan supported her husband, she took one quick look back at the dead man on the floor, and Booth followed her gaze for just a second. He looked at her face and said.

"You really want to kick him don't you?" She smiled just a little bit.

"Yes, but I would probably just hurt my foot, and we need all the feet we can get right now."

They turned and he hopped, with her shoulder to support him towards the door to the room, and eventually upstairs. They came up just behind the altar and both of them saw the tank at the same time. The water was definitely approaching the baby's face. She turned to him,

"Are you able to hop outside by yourself? I'll go get the baby!"

He turned towards the pews and step-hopped by himself towards the door as she ran towards the tank.

As she reached into the tank she confirmed it was not their son in the water, though the child there wore her son's clothes. An elaborate ruse to make sure they thought it was Jax in danger of drowning. She picked up the small unknown boy and held his dripping body close to hers, supporting his little head, and she heard him whimper just a little bit. It was the first sign of life and she was slightly relieved. He would be okay. Temperance was sure of it. This baby was very close in age to her son.

As she made her way out of the altar area, she noticed her husband hadn't made it very far. He had stopped to pray, even though the weight of kneeling on his broken leg must have been excruciating. She stopped by him and let him finish. He lifted his face from his hands and crossed himself. Twice. She put her hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture, and felt the sticky warmth of the blood on his shirt.

"C'mon Seeley, let's get out of here. Let's find our son."

He continued his step-hop motion, but she walked slowly beside him, lending her shoulder as a crutch. The baby started to wake up in her arms and she rubbed his back, murmuring comfort to him, as she would have her own son. Booth stopped and took a second to brush the baby's wet hair away from his little face. The little boy smiled up at him, but kept his head rested on the shoulder of Brennan. Booth wondered who missed this little guy. They were going to be happy to get him back. She took the pause in their progress to ask him a question.

"What were you asking for when you were praying?"

"I was thanking Him for everything. Mostly you..." He paused to look her in the eye. They both seemed to realize that in all likelihood, she should not be standing there beside him. She should be dead. The gun had fired at the chess pieces, but jammed when it was touching her forehead. He kissed her quickly on the same spot where the gun had been pressed and he swore he tasted the tinny metal of the gun.

The partners opened the front door to the church, and were temporarily blinded by the sunlight that still shone down. Booth was a little surprised that it was still daytime. It had felt like days had passed while they were in that basement.

When their vision adjusted to the sunlight they were shocked to see the front lawn covered by about twenty different police and FBI cars, and a full SWAT team bearing down on them. Everyone on the lawn recognized the two and aimed their guns away from the couple and the child. The SWAT team kept moving into the church, following their orders to secure the building. Booth informed them that the suspect was dead in the basement, but he didn't know about everyone else who might have been in the building. He feared the worse, having seen no signs at all of any of the other clergy who were known to be affiliated with the church. The real clergy. On the way out, he also noticed that there was no sign of their son.

Booth saw a paramedic team rushing towards them, and he let the team meet him. He made no further effort to walk under his own power, and when the ambulance crew arrived at their side, he willingly laid down on the gurney to be transported to the hospital.

Temperance walked along beside him as they wheeled him towards the ambulance but before they loaded him into the bus, they both turned their heads towards the squeals of Angela, and they saw the squints approaching rapidly towards them. Angela took her friend into a big hug, squishing both her and the little boy.

"Sweetie, we were so worried...are you guys okay?"

"Ange...how did you know where we were, Booth said no one was coming for us!"

"It was Sweets who figured it out. When you never showed up at the Jeffersonian, we got worried, especially when we discovered that your car was there. We couldn't get a hold of you or Booth, so we sent Sweets to check his office. He played all of Booth's messages, there was one that was very scary, but also very cryptic and Sweets had the guys at the FBI trace the call. It had come from this church, and the FBI had a confirmation from Agent Smith that he and Booth were going to meet here to confront a suspect or something?"

Angela stroked the head of the boy in Brennan's arms. The baby's face was buried in her neck. He seemed scared by all the commotion on the lawn.

"How's Jaxxy here?" Angela noticed the passive expression on her best friends face change to one of panic. As though she had just remembered something.

"Jax is missing; the Gravedigger swapped him for this little boy. We don't know where he is!" Angela was shocked by two things that her friend had just said.

"Whoa, Sweetie...the Gravedigger? What do you mean? Jax is missing?" She turned to one of the officers standing nearby and told him that there was still a little boy missing.

"I'll explain later Ange... Booth really needs a doctor. He's in a lot of pain. Can you please help us find our son?" Angela saw the look on her friends face and she would have agreed to anything she asked, though she was very confused by all that had seemed to happen.

"I'll meet you at the hospital. Honey... we'll find him, don't worry." Angela watched as Temperance only released the boy in her arms long enough to wrap him in a blanket, and then held him close again as she sat beside her husband for the quick trip to the hospital.

As the doors of the ambulance were shut, blocking her from her friends, she heard Brennan say to her partner,

"Booth, aren't you getting tired of people always trying to kill us...?"

She didn't catch Booth's reply.


	26. Justus is delivered

Chapter Thirteen

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_A/N_

_This one is quite a bit longer than usual, but there were a few unanswered question to deal with. ;) This should help!!_

_Thanks for reading._

_I heart you._

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Brennan watched silently, holding the mysterious little boy, as the doctors took care of Booth. The wound in his shoulder was stitched up and he went for a quick surgery to insert some pins in his broken leg, and before midnight fell, he was resting in his own room. Not as comfortably as he would have liked. There was no word at all about their son.

The only person who knew where Jax was, had just been transported to the Jeffersonian for autopsy. He wasn't talking.

The Squints had also taken the car that William had last been driving to the Jeffersonian for analysis. Doctor Saroyan was keeping in constant contact with Brennan to keep her posted on what they had discovered. So far; nothing conclusive.

Booth watched his wife as she gradually fell asleep on the chair beside his bed. The little boy had fallen asleep in her arms hours ago, after being thoroughly checked over by the doctors. He was a little dehydrated and a little malnourished, but otherwise healthy. Booth had checked with headquarters to ask them to keep their eye open for any missing person cases where a small boy was the one missing. Someone had to be looking for him.

He also filled them in on what had transpired at the church. Everything related directly to both the Chess Killer case, and the now completely closed Gravedigger case.

The adrenalin injected into his heart earlier had made him unable to sleep, and the doctors were afraid to give him anything to sedate him for fear of a reaction. His leg had been operated on with only a local anaesthetic. They didn't know how many more ups and downs his heart could handle in one day. Booth laughed to himself at that understatement.

So he lay in the hospital bed, with his right leg in traction, left alone with nothing but his thoughts. His head was full of opinions of what had transpired that day.

He thought of Smitty, dead at the Gravedigger's hand, all of the other priests from Saint Patrick's who were found dead in the church, and every one of those victims, all killed by William in order to set up he and his partner. For revenge on them, his only real excuse was that they had escaped from him and captured his wife, Heather.

Booth would have liked to have been there for her new interrogation, but he was in no position to be intimidating. He still would have liked to have seen the expression on her face when they called out her relationship to William.

He thought of the revelation about his brother Jared, who for all these months, Booth had been convinced that he had killed himself by drinking and driving, but it turned out that his little brother had been another victim of William. That changed so much in Booth's mind. His process of thinking about his brother had to be changed completely. Booth made a mental note to call his Grandfather as soon as possible, the old man would be thrilled that Jared hadn't died in the manner that they were all led to believe. Not that it made his death any less painful, but it would help the grieving process.

He prayed regularly for his son to be alright, and he couldn't be thankful enough for whatever had happened to mis-fire that gun in the church. He looked again at his wife. She was beautiful when she slept. Her arms tightly wrapped around the little boy, temporarily filling in for her own missing son. He could tell even in sleep that she looked exhausted. She had been through a lot today too. He couldn't even fathom the thought of what he would do without her.

It was just after four a.m. when his thoughts were brought from their randomness into focus by the ringing of a cell phone. It was hers, and her eyes opened as she reached into her pocket for the ringing device. She tried to answer it while shifting the boy in her arms but was having trouble balancing everything.

"Bones... pass him to me." He surprised her just a little bit; she must have assumed he was asleep. She stood up and passed the now wakening baby to him, and Booth tucked the boy into the crook of his arm and held him while his wife answered her phone, and went into the hallway so she could speak in normal tones. He hoped that a four a.m. phone call was good news. It usually wasn't.

With the mystery baby now in his arms he took the chance to get a good look at him. He had to be very close in age to Jax. They were pretty close to the same size. His hair, which had been soaking wet when Booth first saw him up close, had now dried to a light blonde. His face was very fair, and the boy looked at him with dark blue eyes. He was a very cute little boy. Someone had to missing him by now.

Temperance came back into the room and handed him the phone as she picked the baby back up.

"It's Cam, she wants to talk to you."

He was unable to wander into the hallway, but everyone in the room was awake now so he spoke in a normal voice. The little boy smiled at him from Brennan's arms. He smiled back.

His smile faded as he listened to Camille tell him what they had discovered so far. Wendell had found an insect egg in the dirt they found under William's fingernails and Hodgins had claimed it almost instantly to figure out the species. Hodgins was also running tests on a number of seed pods that had been found stuck to the windshield wiper of the car. The coroner asked him call the FBI to have a team ready on stand-by, because she felt that soon, they would have the location of where William had been while he and his wife were unconscious in the basement of the church. Where he may have taken their son.

Booth ended the phone call with her and immediately called headquarters and filled them in on what he had just been told. They informed him that the best FBI team in DC was mobilized already, including the Deputy Director, waiting for word on where they would start looking for his son. The man to whom Booth spoke also offered his assurances that Jax would be found and everything would be alright. Seeley certainly hoped so.

He handed the phone back to Brennan and she tucked it back in her pocket, and sat back down on the chair. The little boy snuggled back up to her and she held him tightly. She and Booth just looked at each other; the worry in their eyes mirrored by each other.

"He seems pretty taken with you Bones." Booth smiled again at the little boy and the little face lit up.

"I know what you mean. It's just a by-product of the care I've been giving him. He'll soon forget all about me when we find his real parents." She kissed the top of the boy's head, and the little boy smiled again. He seemed to like the affection that she showed him, and Booth was amazed that her maternal instinct had easily transferred to this lost little boy. She had come such a long way. He hoped that Jax would be found soon. It would destroy her if something happened to him. Himself as well.

Booth finally managed to doze a little bit and his wife fell back asleep too. The exhaustion of the previous day's events had finally taken their toll on him, and his heart rate slowed enough for him to fall into a light sleep. It didn't last long though.

He was woken by the sound of the door opening and a tired looking woman in a worn suit came into his room. She had a briefcase with her and she set it on the table at the foot of the bed while she waited for the two others in the room to wake up fully. Booth glanced at the clock on the wall, it was just after seven.

Temperance sat up fully in the chair and looked at Booth for an explanation to who this woman was. He had none.

"Agent Booth, Doctor Brennan, my name is Samantha Cleary and I'm with the FBI Branch of Social Services. It was brought to my attention that you found an unknown child at the scene of the crime yesterday..." Booth cut her off.

"How do you know who we are?"

"Agent Booth, everyone knows who you and your wife are. We've never met formally, but well, now you know who I am, so we can dispense with pleasantries if that's okay." She looked at the partners and they both nodded, and they both realized what she was there for.

"I've come to take the child into custody until we can find him a home temporarily. We'll get him out of your hair."

She went over to the chair and took the boy from Brennan's arms and the child instantly started to scream. Booth noticed immediately the shocked look on his wife's face. She was speechless. Her arms stayed outstretched for longer than they should have, towards the baby. Tears welled up her eyes. He had to do something fast.

"Ms. Cleary... We're registered foster parents...couldn't he stay with us until we find out where he belongs?" His dark brown eyes showed such compassion that her heart went out to the couple. She knew that their own son was missing. Everyone at the Hoover building knew.

"You're registered?" She was willing to negotiate. If they were willing to keep the baby for now, it would save her a ton of time today. This was only the first case of about a dozen that she had to investigate.

"Yeah, my wife has been registered for years. We can provide for him until his parents are found. No problem. Right Tempe?" He looked at his wife, whose arms had dropped to her lap, and whose eyes had spilled over with tears. Through the tears, her eyes looked hopeful. She nodded.

"Okay, if that's okay with both of you, I have the paperwork ready." She went back to her briefcase and pulled out a file and a pen and handed the baby back to Brennan. He stopped crying instantly and his little arms went around her neck with a vice-like grip. She smiled down at him, and then at her husband.

Booth and Brennan both signed the paperwork making the unknown boy their temporary charge. Samantha thanked them both and said she would be in touch. She left the room as quickly as she had come, leaving the couple with the boy.

"Thank you Booth." She stood up and leaned over him and kissed him. He kissed her back, but their tenderness was interrupted by the small boy reaching out to grab Booth's IV line.

"No buddy, that's not for you to play with." He smiled again at the boy and the baby again smiled back at him.

"I wish we knew what his name was." Temperance stood back up straight and balanced the boy on her hip as she had done a thousand times with her own son.

"We could call him Lucky for now... I mean, just until we find out his real name."

She laughed out loud, and Booth noticed how good it felt to hear her laugh.

"I guess that works for now. He was pretty lucky that we got to him in time!"

They both looked at the boy and he grinned at both of them in turn. Temperance pressed her lips to the boy's head again and whispered to him,

"I think we're all pretty lucky."

Booth heard her and his heart warmed. He sure hoped that their luck would hold and their son would be found soon.

Not long after the social worker left his room, the door was again opened and they watched Angela and Hodgins bust into the room. They both seemed very excited.

"Did you find Jax?" Brennan asked them before they had a chance to speak. Hodgins answered her.

"No...Not yet...but we have a really good lead..." He was winded, as though he had been running. The artist also seemed slightly out of breath.

"Did the egg that Wendell found tell you something? Or Cam said you found some seedpods on the windshield?" Brennan's speaking was quick and fast. Hodgins shook his head, still trying to catch his breath.

"No... Those were dud leads. The seedpods are found in over a dozen areas in DC, and the egg was almost impossible to identify, but, on the front grill of the car, I found the wing of a Hesperiidae Pyrrhopyginae..."

Brennan continued to stare at him, she looked slightly frustrated.

"I don't know what that means."

"It's a type of butterfly. Now... it's usually only found in South America, but it was recently introduced as an experiment, to a small park just outside the National Cathedral. A park called Bishop Park..." Hodgins looked back and forth between the two to see if they had caught up.

"There's no way that's a coincidence... William was in the process of killing 'bishops' when we found him out. He had to have been there." Booth's voice showed his excitement, he hoped this would lead to their son...

"Sweetie, we came here to get you. We're on our way over there now to see if anyone saw anything!"

Temperance stared at Booth, realizing that he could not come along. He realized it too, but made a shoving gesture towards the door.

"Go you guys!" Everyone made a move towards the door, but Bones turned back to her husband.

"Booth, do you need anything before we go? Are you going to be okay here?"

He thought for a second, and then asked if she could hand him his cell phone. She handed 'Lucky' to Angela and the artist commented that he was a cute kid. Temperance smiled at her as she dug in Booth's pants pocket, which had been placed in the closet in the room, and pulled out his cell phone, and a piece of folded paper. She handed them both to him and he took the phone, but told her to hang onto the paper. She might find it useful. She unfolded it quickly to reveal that it was the copy of the sketch of Father William that Angela had drawn for Booth and Smitty the day earlier. She wasn't sure of it's importance, William was dead, but she had learned to trust Booth about things such as this.

She put it in her pocket and quickly kissed him on the lips and left with the promise that she would call him if they discovered anything. They traded 'I love you' and suddenly Booth was left alone in the room. He quickly phoned his office, and told them the location where they should send the team that had been assembled. He was informed that they were on their way.

He sat back in the bed, and tried to ignore the throbbing of his leg, and was quickly distracted by the throbbing of his heart.

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Doctor Brennan, Doctor Hodgins and Angela pulled up outside the park at the same time as the FBI team. The men in uniforms quickly stormed the small park that was surrounded by a beautiful stone wall, and started a search of the small area. Temperance felt her heart still when cadaver dogs were brought in to sniff around all the plants that filled Bishop Park. Angela noticed her distress, and stood with her arm around her as the FBI crew did their thing.

"It's okay Sweetie, it's only a precaution. I'm sure Jax is just fine."

For the first time, Temperance wasn't so sure. William had killed a lot of people. Why would he hesitate at one small boy? Her and Booth's small boy. She held 'Lucky' just a little bit closer to her. He held her back.

The FBI team had ushered a number of homeless people out of the park and the Squints watched them all shuffle past. One of the men in the group stopped at Brennan and the little boy in her arms and stared at them.

"What are you doing with Justus?"

"Pardon me?" Brennan asked him back. She had no idea what he was talking about.

"That's Abby's boy. Why do you have him?" He looked at her suspiciously.

"Do you know this boy?" Her voice broke.

"Yeah...that's Abby's boy. I already told you that. She named him Justus. She lives here sometimes, but I ain't seen her all day." He started to walk away, but Brennan grabbed him by the arm. He looked at her with anger.

"Do you know where Abby is?" She had to know everything he did.

"I told you...I ain't seen her all day. She went off with that priest yesterday, and nobody's seen her since."

"What about the father of the baby? Do you know who he is?"

"Nah... Nobody knows. Not even Abby. Sometimes, she turns tricks to get money. One guy left her with more than twenty bucks that's for sure," The man laughed and Brennan pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket and showed it to the man. Booth's instincts were right again. The paper was important.

"Do you recognize this man?"

"Yep. That's Father Will. He sits here sometimes and plays chess with us. He's a good guy. Kinda strange, but a good guy. He's the one that Abby went off with yesterday."

Their conversation was cut off by the shouting of some FBI Agents and the barking of the dogs. The Squints heard someone yell,

"Bring Shovels...we found something!"

Brennan almost passed out. This was not good news. Angela held her tightly and Hodgins hovered close by. She started walking towards the commotion, shifting Justus in her arms, but Angela held her back.

"I don't think you should go in there honey. What if it's Jax? Do you really want to see him like that?"

Brennan looked from her friend to Hodgins, and before she kept walking, she turned to the homeless man, who had inadvertently been a wealth of information and asked him if he would stay there. She needed to talk to him some more. He just shrugged his shoulders, but stayed put.

The Doctor, who examined thousands of remains in her career, found herself slightly cautious to approach the mound of dirt that the Agents were shovelling. When she got a little closer, she instantly realized that the body was way too big to be her son. It was also obviously female. She could tell that from where she stood.

The woman had been uncovered, and one of the agents pulled something from her pocket. He looked up at Brennan, who had covered the baby's eyes; he didn't need to see who she suspected the body had belonged to.

"It's an old driver's licence. It says the name is Abigail Morrison. Does that mean anything to anyone here?"

Abigail...Abby...

Brennan let the tears flow. So many emotions let themselves out at once that she couldn't control them anymore.

The little boy in her arms was now an orphan as far as she knew. Alone as she had once been in the world, and her heart broke for him. He had no idea. Angela wrapped her arms around her friend again,

"Are you okay?"

The forensic anthropologist's tears turned into angry ones.

"No...Where the hell is my son?"

Nobody knew.

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Doctor Sweets walked into the hospital through the emergency ward. His eyes scanned the people in the waiting room. It was the usual collection of people in just such a room, all waiting for their turn to see a doctor.

He was on his way up to see Booth and Brennan to see how they were holding up. He knew their son hadn't been found yet, and he was worried about what the stress was doing to them. He wanted to help in any way he could.

He was just about through the doors into the main part of the hospital when one of the people waiting caught his eye. Not so much the person herself, but what she held in her arms. The woman was quite elderly, and quite obviously homeless. Her tattered clothes were dirty and she kept one hand on a small basket with wheels and kept her other hand firmly on a bundle held close to her chest. It was this bundle that caught Sweets' eyes. Or the mop of auburn curls that poked out the top of it.

He turned on his heel and walked over to the woman. He had to be sure.

He sat down next to her, and smiled at her when she looked at him suspiciously. He turned on his psychology mode. He knew he had to get this woman to trust him.

"Hi there. My name is Doctor Sweets. Is that your baby?" With the mention of the word 'Doctor' the woman's eyes melted a bit. She laughed a toothless laugh at him. She was obviously way too old to have given birth recently.

"No, dis is Abby's baby. His name is Justus."

"Is Abby here too?"

"No, I found de baby in de park last night. Abby wasn't der. I watch de baby when Abby is busy. He's not breathing to good. Can you help him?"

The woman pulled the dirty blanket away from the baby's face to reveal to Sweets the spitting image of Doctor Brennan, only smaller and extremely flushed. The baby's normally bright blue eyes were glassy. He obviously had a fever. His bangs were matted to his forehead with sweat. Sweets could hear his congested breathing. The baby needed a doctor, and fast.

He took only a moment to decide his next move.

"I can take him to see a doctor. Can I take him?" The woman's eyes went dark again and she covered the boy's face and held him tighter.

"No...Abby let me watch him sometimes. Only me."

That didn't work. He tried something else.

"What's your name?"

She looked at him, wary, but she answered.

"Everybody call me Manny."

"Okay, Manny, that little boy is not your friend's baby, Justus, he's my friend's little boy, Jax. They've been looking for him and they are very worried. Wouldn't you be worried if your baby was missing?"

"Abby is missing."

Sweets felt he was on to something here.

"Okay, aren't you worried about Abby?"

"Yeah... she never goes anywhere wit out Justus, not when he's sick! She's a good mom to dis boy."

Sweets still hadn't convinced her that this was not Justus. He couldn't tell if she had a mental illness, or was just very uneducated, but he thought that maybe it was time to call in reinforcements. He dialled Booth's cell phone number.

The man answered the phone with his usual "Booth', and when he heard the voice of the young psychologist, his voice took on a strange tone that Sweets was unable to decipher.

He asked the man if he would be able to come down to the emergency ward. It was very important. Booth asked if it was about his son and Sweets told him he would rather talk to him in person, if he could just get down there. The connection was cut off quickly.

Not long after his call, Sweets saw the Agent wheeling himself through the doors, looking in every direction for the source of the phone call he had just received.

Sweets waved towards him and when he got closer, he saw the heavily bandaged leg, and blood dripping down his arm, from where an IV line had very recently been ripped. He looked panicked, and confused all at the same time.

Booth saw the old woman and Sweets and wondered what the hell this could be all about. He looked at the young Doctor and Sweets pointed at the bundle in the woman's arms. Booth recognized his son's form beneath the dirty blanket, and wheeled himself faster.

Sweets took the opportunity to pull the blanket off the baby's face to reveal his son to the worried man.

Jax lifted his head just slightly when his father called out his name, and his little eyes tried to focus on the man who was always there for him.

"Daddy!" The small boy lifted his arms towards his father, and Manny looked down at him in shock.

"You Justus' daddy? You are in big trouble." She looked at him with mean eyes.

Booth didn't know what she meant, but he pulled his son away from the woman and instantly felt the warmth of his son in his arms. Way too much warmth in his opinion.


	27. Heart aches Heart breaks and finally

Chapter Fourteen

Doctor Sweets watched the reunion of father and son with a small smile on his face. Booth held the boy so tightly, yet so tenderly and he had tears in his eyes. Sweets couldn't recall if he had ever seen the man so emotional. Booth had a general tendency to bury his feelings, but when they emerged...they exploded.

He held his son in a hug for a while, and then he sat the boy in his lap. He cradled him with one arm and brushed his hair back with the other.

Booth noticed that his hand was wet when he did that. He also felt how warm the boy's head was. This worried him more than a little. His son did not look well; his cold had definitely gotten worse in the last twenty four hours. Fortunately, they were really close to some of the best doctors in DC.

He tucked his son against his chest, and made his way to wheel them out of the room, but the woman seated beside Doctor Sweets started to panic.

"Don't take Justus! I have to watch him for Abby!" She made a motion to grab the baby back, but there was no way Booth was letting go of his son now that they had found him.

Booth looked to Sweets for an explanation for her reaction.

The young Doctor had the elderly woman by the arm, preventing her from advancing further towards Booth and the baby, and he made her sit back down. He motioned for Booth to come closer. The man made no effort to do so.

"Manny... I need you to really look at the baby. Can you see? It's not Justus. Look carefully..."

The woman leaned towards the wheelchair and really strained her eyes at the little boy, who had started coughing. She did notice something.

"His hair is darker I tink... Justus is very blonde... dey look de same..." She looked at the man seated in the chair, her eyes still squinted, "I'm sorry mister...my eyes aren't too good anymore. I just saw him in de park, and couldn't find Abby all night... and he seemed so sick so I brought him here..."

Booth took only a fraction of a second to know that the old woman was telling the truth. He saw Sweets nodding, and he asked Manny,

"Thank you for bringing him back to me. My wife and I are very, very much in your debt. Would you like to come with us to see the doctor?"

The old woman nodded gratefully, and Sweets helped her out of the chair. She shuffled along behind, as Booth wheeled himself and Jax up to the nurses' station, and convinced the nurse there very quickly that his son needed to see a doctor, and fast.

They were led into a private area and Jax started to cough again. The sound of it made Booth almost want to vomit. It did not sound healthy.

Booth and Sweets both heard someone talking behind the curtain, the nurse who had led them there and a man's voice. Probably a Doctor. The voices were slightly muffled, but the sharp ears of the men caught the gist of it.

"That FBI agent from upstairs...yeah, the one who's son is missing...no, the baby is with them...I don't know who the others are..."

The voices stopped as the curtain was parted just enough for the Doctor to make his way through. He took Jax from his father's arms, probably the only person that Booth would have willingly yielded his son to at that point, and laid the small boy down on the bed. Jax continued to cough, and the Doctor listened to the boy's chest with his stethoscope. He listened to his congested chest in a few different places, and then looked at Booth.

"I think he's got a pretty major case of pneumonia, I'm going to send him up for a chest x-ray, and we'll know for sure. We'll put him on antibiotics right away." He noticed the pained look on the face of the man in the wheelchair. "I'm quite sure he'll be just fine. We'll know more when we get the x-rays back."

The doctor told them he would be right back, and noticing the blood stain on the bandages of the FBI Agent's leg, from where his stitches had clearly broken, he warned the man he should elevate the limb. He nodded towards the bed that Jax still lay on, and Booth got the hint. As the Doctor left, the Special Agent stood up and climbed carefully into the bed, picking up his son and holding him in his arms. Doctor Sweets was unsure whether or not to offer assistance, but Booth managed to make himself, and more importantly, his son, comfortable.

A nurse came in a minute later and prepared the baby's arm for an IV line. She noticed the dried blood on Booth's arm where his line had been, and with a wink asked him if he wanted her to put his back in too. He politely declined the offer, letting her know that he was not the patient. His son was.

The boy didn't even fuss as the needle was inserted into his arm, and the fluids started to drip into his body. He seemed content just to be in his father's arms. The nurse started to move the bed into the hallway, when Manny started to panic again. Booth asked the nurse to wait just a second, and he shifted himself to look at her.

"Manny, that's your name right?" When she nodded, he continued, "Jax and I are just going for some tests. If you want, my friend here Doctor Sweets will make sure you have a hotel room for a couple of days and you can go and rest for awhile. You can come back and see him and he'll be a lot better. I'm sure you had a very rough night with a sick baby..."

His sympathy for this woman was not forced. He was very, very grateful that she had enough sense to bring his son into the hospital. He couldn't wait to hear the full story, but he had more important things to worry about right now. Jax started coughing again, and Booth held him so that he was sitting up a little more.

Doctor Sweets was just a little shocked at Booth's request of him, but then...it made sense that he would want the woman who had found his son and cared for him to be taken care of herself. Booth had to have noticed her obvious state of misfortune. Manny looked from the man on the bed to Sweets and back again. She wanted to trust them both, but she didn't trust many people. These two seemed alright. It wasn't as though she had anything to lose.

She agreed to the terms on one condition. She wanted to know if they could help her find Abby and Justus.

Booth agreed. He wasn't sure about Abby, but he had a feeling that he knew where Justus was.

Sweets approached the side of the bed and was surprised when Booth stuck out his hand to shake his own. He happily reciprocated the gesture.

"Thanks Sweets. I owe you big time for what you did. We both do." The Agent's eyes showed his sincerity and Sweets was touched. The psychologist wondered ever so briefly if a hug was in order, but decided that maybe it was too soon.

The nurse started to wheel the two further down the hall, leaving Sweets and Manny in their wake. Booth called over his shoulder to the young doctor,

"You know I'll pay you back for the hotel room. I'm good for it."

Sweets just smiled a little. He suspected he wouldn't see a dime, but he didn't care. That's what family did for each other. He understood that now.

He watched as Booth made the nurse divert past a telephone. Sweets smiled again, pretty sure there was about to be a very happy Doctor Brennan somewhere, wherever she was.

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Doctor Brennan examined the body of the woman who had been found in the park. She knew that the woman had not been dead very long, less than twenty four hours, and she could tell, even though there was no actual evidence, that this woman was related to the boy who now slept in the arms of Angela.

His mother was dead, and according to the homeless man, nobody knew who his father was. Brennan couldn't help but feel guilty that she was responsible for Abby's death, albeit indirectly. She wasn't as good at speculating as Booth was, but she assumed that William had killed Abby to take her son, and make the switch for Jax.

The FBI continued their search of the small park and then proceeded to surrounding areas. They had found no more evidence of another body, dead or alive.

Temperance didn't know if she was relieved or not. Jax was out there somewhere. He had been so sick, and she had no idea where he had spent the night, who had taken care of him, or if there was no need for anyone to take care of him because he was dead. Killed by William.

Angeal saw her friends facial expression change as she stood up from the remains. There was nothing more she could determine by leaning over the body in the park. The FBI medical examiners made the motions to transport the body of the woman to the Jeffersonian at her request.

Hodgins led the two women and the small boy back to where Temperance had left the homeless man, but they discovered that he was gone. Brennan was saddened by this; she had hoped to find out more about this Abby and anyone who knew her. Anyone who might come forward to take care of Justus. As she climbed into the backseat of Hodgins' car and Angela handed her the baby, she was secretly wishing that maybe her and Booth could take care of the little boy.

She checked her cell phone to see if anyone had called, but discovered the battery had died. She asked Angela if she could borrow her phone but was discouraged when Booth didn't answer his. She hoped everything was alright at the hospital. He had probably just fallen asleep, but she kind of doubted that. He would be worried about what they would find in the park.

The trip to the Jeffersonian was quiet. The couple in the front seat watched their friend in the back with quick glances every so often to see if she was still holding together. Not that they really had any doubt, but Brennan had been through a lot in the last days and everyone had their breaking point.

They arrived at the lab ahead of the body that everyone severely hoped was the last victim of the Gravedigger.

Cam and Wendell, who had not entirely gotten over his own illness, but had come into work anyway, were still doing the autopsy on William Burton. Cam let them know that they had proven that the man died of a massive heart attack. A quick and silent ending for the man who had caused so much heartache for everyone else. He was still causing heartache for the woman who couldn't find her son. The more time that passed the more convinced she became that her son was probably dead.

The squints offered her words of encouragement, but she had convinced herself that if Jax was still alive, someone would have found him by now and reported him to the authorities. She was emotionally detaching herself from her feelings, but she couldn't distance herself completely from reality. She had been long removed from the person she used to be, but she knew the old Temperance was there, lurking to get back out. The old Temperance who tried to convince everyone that she was alright.

Nobody in the lab was fooled.

Hodgins suggested that they go check out the data base to find out exactly who this Abigail Morrison was. He entered the data as Brennan and Angela watched over his shoulder. Her driver's licence information appeared on the screen. Temperance sighed. It was her fault that Abby was dead. Indirectly, but she still felt guilt.

Hodgins then searched the records for birth certificates registered in the last year, and it wasn't long before they came across one Justus Morrison, born to Abigail Morrison. The space under 'Father' had been left blank. All three sets of eyes turned to the little boy, who was sitting on a chair, just looking at them. Brennan wasn't really surprised to learn that her son and Justus' birthdays were only one week apart. She had thought that they were close in age. Both of their first birthdays were rapidly approaching.

"He's an orphan. All alone in the world. How do we find his family?" Brennan looked at the other two and they just shrugged their shoulders at her.

"We'll find out Sweetie. Don't worry." Angela wrapped her arms around her best friend, and the woman leaned into her embrace willingly.

Cam came running into the room at that moment and spoke directly to Doctor Brennan.

"Seeley just called...he's been trying to get a hold of you...they found Jax! They're at the hospital..." The coroner seemed slightly out of breath.

Everyone in the room turned towards Brennan and watched her face go through about five different emotions before she grabbed Justus and ran for the door. She stopped before she left the room and turned back to the others.

"Thank you...for everything!" She left before any of the squints could offer to go with her.

She ran for her car. She was glad that Booth had convinced her at one point to hide a spare key somewhere under the car, because she had no idea where her own keys were. The hidden key was indeed still hidden, but she found it quickly.

The car was still parked in the underground parking lot and she strapped Justus into the car seat in the back and made a quick mental note that they would have to get another car seat. They would have to get another everything for as long as Justus would stay with them.

She drove way too fast to the hospital, thinking to herself that Booth would have been terrified if he had been in the car. Justus clung to her as she ran into the building, and stopped only briefly, wondering where her son and husband would be. She decided to try Booth's room first when there was no nurse at the station to ask.

She opened the door and any emotional outburst that she had been suppressing, came forth in tears from her eyes. Her little boy was in his father's arms, but he had an oxygen mask over his face, being held in place by Booth. He was attached to an IV line and there were a few different bags of medicine dripping into his body. He looked so small and pale, and her sobs racked her body.

As she approached the side of their bed, Booth reached out for Justus and lifted his son up a bit for his wife to take the baby. Her tears continued and Booth held her arm as she rocked the little boy. His heart broke for her; he hadn't seen her cry like this in a long time. He felt honoured that he was the one that she felt comfortable enough with to expose her true, deep emotions. He had known they were there for so long, and loved her more now than ever because he was there to see them. Her heart was no longer made of stone.

"It's okay Temperance... He's going to be just fine..." Her sobs calmed a bit, and she kept her arms tightly wrapped around the boy.

Eventually, she was able to talk. Booth was relieved; her crying was starting to affect everyone in the room deeply. He wiped a few tears from his own eyes.

"I'm sorry... I just thought he was dead. I didn't think there was any way William would have let him live. I had almost completely convinced myself to start preparing for the worst."

"I know a very smart woman who is always telling people not to jump to conclusions." She knew what he meant.

"What happened to him? Temperance looked at her husband with an expression that Booth had never seen before. It was relief, love, joy, anger, and sadness all in one. He understood them all, except for the sadness.

"Some homeless lady found him alone in a park and thought he was someone else. I don't know, but her eyes are really bad or something. She knew he was really sick, and she brought him here, and Sweets found them in the waiting room on his way up here."

"Sweets found them?" She seemed surprised. "I should probably apologize for punching him in the face then...do you think?" His eyes sparkled at her and he noticed the first hint of a smile on her lips.

He filled her in on everything he knew. Jax had pneumonia, but he seemed to be responding to the antibiotics, and the mask was supplying some extra oxygen for his sore lungs. His temperature had already dropped a degree in the last hour and the doctors were very hopeful. So was Booth. He told her all about Manny, what he knew of the story anyway. He hoped Sweets would find out some more about this woman and her missing Justus and Abby. Justus...

Booth' attention went to the little blonde boy by his side. So did hers. They looked back at each other and smiled.

"His name is Justus!"

"I think his name is Justus!"

They spoke at the same time. He was the first to laugh, and she followed. Both of the little boys looked at the adult closest to them and smiled. Temperance was convinced more than before that her son was going to be alright.

She told him all about what they had discovered at the park. All about Abby and Justus. How the little boy seemed to be alone now, thanks to William. The man had affected more lives than just their own and they both seemed to realize it. They just stared at each other, both thinking about what could have been. Temperance surprised him by asking,

"Do you think Justus could stay with us on a permanent basis?"

She waited for his answer.


	28. No clowns, everyone else and an answer!

Booth ran his hand over the scar on his wife's stomach. She still slept, but he had awoken a while ago. He had been patiently waiting for her to wake up, but now he hoped that a little encouragement would help. He felt her stir a little bit and smiled to himself. His hand went a little bit higher and then a little bit lower. She turned around in bed to face him, and before he could say anything she kissed him passionately. Their hands explored each other with eagerness and before long their passion for each other exploded by making love. Sweet and tender at first, and passionate and uninhibited by the end.

They lay together afterwards, still entwined; Booth loved the feeling that they were 'one', when a light knock on their bedroom door startled them back into reality. He pulled away from her and pulled the sheet up over both of them, trying to remember if he had locked their door the night before. He was pretty sure he had. His heard his son's voice through the door.

"Dad?" Parker was obviously awake. "Are you awake? I heard you yell something!"

Bones laughed out loud at the embarrassed look on her husband's face. His engrossment in their physical activity had made him temporarily forget that his oldest son was staying with them that weekend. He might have been a little more restrained if he had remembered. She was thankful that he had not.

"Go get some breakfast Parker. I'll be right down." Booth kissed his wife again, that stopped her laughter. The kiss started to get a little bit more intense, and he forced himself to part from her.

"C'mon Bones...we've got a big day ahead of us. It's not every day our son turns one year old."

"No, not every day, but two of them in a week is pretty important."

He kissed her on the tip of the nose and made a motion to get out of bed, he headed for their bathroom to take a shower, but before he went into the small, adjoining room he turned back to her.

"Are you coming? We can kill two birds with one stone." She looked confused, but got out of bed and took his outstretched hand.

"How are we killing birds?"

He didn't answer her question with words. Only actions. He kept his voice down this time.

A while later Booth arrived in the kitchen and sat beside his son, careful to not bump his still-sore leg as he sat down at the table. Parker continued to eat his breakfast, and eventually looked at his father.

"What were you guys doing in there?"

Booth turned a bright shade of red, and quickly changed the subject. There was no way he was having the sex talk with Parker yet.

"Are you excited for the party today? Your little brother is turning one. That's a pretty important milestone."

"Yeah. Bones said there was going to be a bunch of animals and stuff. It should be fun," Parker changed the subject with his usual child-like abruptness, "Hey Dad?"

"Yes..." Booth was poking his son in the ribs, trying to get him to laugh. The little boy was doing a stellar job of ignoring him.

"Is Justus going to be my new little brother?"

"Do you want him to be?" Booth really wondered how his first-born felt about the situation.

"Of course I do. He needs a big brother to look out for him. Like you did with Uncle Jared right?"

Booth felt a new, different emotion at the mention of Jared's name. Some sadness, but a different kind of sadness. That wound was healing better now.

"Yeah bud. Exactly like I did with Uncle Jared. You're going to have double duty now. Can you handle it?"

"Yep." Parker was distracted by a large truck pulling into their backyard that he spied through the kitchen window. "Dad! That truck has circus written on the side of it. That's so cool!"

Seeley wondered at that point just how big this party was going to be. He had not really paid attention to the details of the planning.

He looked over to the entrance of the kitchen and saw his younger son walking his way into the room. He held out his arms and his heart swelled when the little boy smiled his huge smile and went to him.

"Happy birthday little big man!!" He swept the boy up into his arms and made him giggle with sloppy kisses to his cheek. Parker watched the interaction with a smile.

Jax showed no evidence of the sickness he had suffered with. He was his normal happy little self again.

Temperance followed not far behind with Justus in her arms. Booth smiled at the blonde boy and he smiled back. Justus seemed to be adjusting to his new life, but he was showing some signs of trauma from his separation from his mother. He seemed to adore Booth, but he had definitely bonded with the anthropologist. He didn't like it when she left his sight. Even for a minute.

She handed the boy to Booth and he sat at the table with both little boys on his lap while his wife made them some coffee. She smiled when she looked over and saw the sight of both boys looking up at him adoringly.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked her, with a glimmer in his eye.

"I'm not laughing...It's just adorable. I never thought there would be two babies in our house."

"Never say never Bones!"

"I've heard that before somewhere..." She rolled her eyes, and he laughed out loud at her.

He set Jax down on the floor and Parker went to his younger brother. The smaller Booth obviously adored his big brother and Parker led him from the kitchen into the television room to watch some cartoons. The two adults were left alone in the kitchen with Justus still on Booth's knee. He bounced the baby on the uninjured leg and he was thrilled to hear the boy giggle.

Temperance sat down beside him with a cup of coffee for both of them. He sipped his gratefully. When he set the cup down, he just looked at her. She smiled at him, but he kept his face serious.

"Are you absolutely positive that you want to pursue adoption of Justus here? I mean, not all that long ago you said you weren't sure if you would ever be able to share your love for Jax. This little boy is going to need all the love he can get." Their eyes stayed connected while she pondered her answer.

"I've discovered something in the last few weeks Booth..."

"Oh yeah, what's that?"

"Well, it's hard to describe, but I have found that I don't have to share my love for Jax. I can just create more love, enough for Justus too."

He was a little surprised at her answer. His heart almost exploded out of his chest he was so in love with her in that moment. He grinned at her, and then kissed Justus on the top of his head. He turned the boy just a little bit so he could look into the little face.

"You hear that buddy... it takes her four years to realize she loves me, but it takes her less than three weeks to fall for you! What a lucky little man!" His face glowed at her, and she radiated back at him.

He leaned towards her to kiss her, and she met him half way. They were in the process of doing just that when Parker came back into the kitchen.

"Oh my God you guys...get a room. I don't know if I can handle another little brother any time soon."

"Parker...don't take the lord's name in vain okay?" Booth wondered exactly how much his son knew about the birds and the bees. Maybe he should be ready to have that talk with Parker, he should definitley start his lessons while he was young on how to be devastatingly charming to members of the opposite sex. Not that Parker was going to need a lot of help.

"Sorry Dad. Hey Bones.., did you really rent the circus for Jax' birthday party?"

Booth laughed at her when she answered,

"Not the whole circus. There were a few of the clowns who couldn't make it."

They all looked out the window at the large tent being erected in the back yard.

Booth continued to laugh.

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By mid-afternoon the backyard was transformed into the ultimate party. It wasn't just child oriented, there was a grill being manned by Doctor Gordon Wyatt, who was thrilled to be able to show off his culinary skills. Doctor Sweets stood beside the tall British man and tried to make it look like the two weren't talking about Booth and Brennan. Every time the partners looked towards him, he looked away. Booth had started to make a game of it.

Sweets had spoken to them in private when he arrived. It turned out his suspicions were correct about Manny, the woman who had cared for Jax the night he was missing. She had been diagnosed with Dementia, and they were looking for a good home for her to live the rest of her days. Any information she had about Justus and his deceased Mother were lost in the endless confusion of the old woman's mind. Temperance wouldn't admit to anyone that she was terrified that there would be someone who wanted to claim Justus. He already felt like a part of their family. She would be heartbroken if he was taken away now.

So many people already wandered around. Everyone from FBI to Jeffersonian. Immediate family and others. Temperance and Seeley played the ultimate host to their guests. They greeted everyone with hugs and kisses. Well, she did, he just smiled proudly.

The two were interrupted from a conversation with a couple of Booth's buddies from his hockey team by Hodgins and Angela. They both were grinning as Temperance leaned to give her best friend a hug. Over the artist's shoulder, she saw a familiar face and after a couple of seconds of shock she flung herself at the young man who had been her right hand man for so long.

Black-gloved hands rubbed her back when the hug lingered. She pulled back to stare the young man in the eye.

"Zack...what are you doing here? How did you get out? Did you escape again? There are court officials here...they'll see you."

Zack shook his hair out of his eyes, and smiled at Booth, his glance was quick, and he didn't want to give away their secret.

"No Doctor Brennan, someone struck a deal with higher authorities and got me a weekend pass. As long as I stay with my guardian, and stay out of trouble, they might be willing to do it on a regular basis."

"That's amazing Zack! It's good to see you! Who is your guardian?"

Zack pointed at Hodgins and Angela. Everyone chuckled. Brennan thought to herself, that whoever had pulled that off had some major sway with the higher-ups. She tried not to look at her husband because she knew he would know that she knew it was him. She excused herself from the group, noticing that Russ and Amy and their girls had just walked through the back door of the house.

They all watched her go. Booth leaned on his crutches and watched her longer than everyone else. They all watched him watching her, and they were thrilled that everything had worked out, once again, for the couple. Booth turned back to Zack.

"It's good to see you man. Thanks for coming." The FBI Agent clapped the young man on the shoulder. Angela smiled at someone who had walked up behind Booth, and he turned to see who it was.

"Gramps! How are you...?" Both of the Booths hugged warmly, and the older man held on to his grandson's shoulders.

"Seeley, don't call me that. Now...where is this new great-grandson of mine?" He looked towards the two little boys who were being closely watched by their big brother as they wandered around the yard. Jax was loving all the attention from everyone. Some of the faces were familiar to him, some were not. Parker was taking his job very seriously.

"Don't jinx it! We only have temporary guardianship so far. We're still waiting to hear about the possibility of adoption. We're still looking for any family members who might want him..."

Booth looked at the squints and the former squint who were watching the two Booth's with smiles. They were so alike it was uncanny. Booth started to apologize, he nodded towards the boys, but Hodgins cut him off,

"WE should go get our little guy some cake, while there's some left..." He and Angela both put their arm around Zack's shoulder and guided him towards the food, but not before Zack thanked Booth.

Booth's only reply was to place his finger on his lips and then point towards Bones, who had noticed the grandfather and was making her way back across the lawn with a smile to say hello.

Booth and Brennan met where the little boys were playing and Booth's grandfather picked up Justus and he had him charmed in moments. The little boy laughed at the old man's funny faces. The married couple noticed how good it was to hear him laugh. He was coming around. He would be just fine under their guidance and love.

The group laughed as Booth's grandfather set Justus down, and Jax approached his counterpart and in the exact way his father had just done to his mother, he put his arm around his new room-mate. Booth thought to himself that there was some of him in that boy after all. He kissed his wife on the cheek. The silence after the moment was interrupted by Caroline Julian approaching them.

"Agent Booth! Doctor Brennan!" She had a blue envelope in her hand and was waving it towards them.

When she got close enough to them she handed the envelope to Brennan, who seemed afraid to open it.

"What is this?" Temperance asked the lawyer.

"It's a summons to appear in court. You've been served." She let the two panic for only a moment or two before she let them in on her maybe-not-so-funny joke.

"I'm just kidding Cheries, don't panic...it's the paperwork awarding you guys permanent guardianship of Justus there. In six months, providing nobody steps forward, you can legally adopt him. It's all legal now. I brought the papers over for Samantha Cleary, since obviously my invite was lost in the mail."

She tried to glare at the couple, but they were lost in each other's eyes. They kissed in front of everybody with no inhibitions. Brennan finally pulled away from him and looked at Caroline with one eyebrow raised.

"What do you want us to do in return for this favour?" Caroline always had a price...a bargain.

"Well, I had a suggestion, but I'm guessing by the smug look on that man's face," she pointed to Booth, "That you guys already do that fairly often. I guess I just have one request..."

"What's that?" Booth asked when she paused.

"Try not to let this new one get kidnapped quite so often!"

Everyone looked at Brennan to see her reaction to Caroline's 'joke'. She just smiled and answered the phone ringing in her pocket. She turned slightly away but Booth heard her say,

"You're where? ...Okay... we'll be right there." She clicked her phone shut and turned back to Booth. He couldn't read her expression.

"Booth, can we go into the kitchen?...Let's bring the boys...there's something we have to discuss..." She turned to Parker, who continued to hover over the younger boys. "Can you bring Jax inside for us?" He nodded, and took the little boy by the hand and started to lead him into the house. Temperance picked up Justus, and Booth hobbled behind them all. He had no idea what this was about. What else could possibly have gone wrong? The rest of the group wondered what was up as well.

When they were all in the kitchen, he could no longer contain his curiosity.

"Tempe...what's this all about? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong...I'll be right back." She set Justus down in a high chair and went to the front door and opened it to let her father into the foyer. They hugged warmly and Max made his way into the kitchen and immediately picked up his grandson. He looked at him in awe, and looked back to his daughter.

"He looks just like you Tempe. He's gorgeous. Nicely done you guys." His gaze then turned to his son-in-law. "You're not going to arrest me are you Booth?" The FBI Agent hadn't seen Max since the incident in the hangar with Gus. Max had shot the unarmed man and an arrest warrant had to be issued for him. Booth was willing to let this one go.

"You know what Max? I will make you the promise that I will never arrest you on my son's birthday. The paperwork's a bitch, and we've got a pretty decent party going on out there." He pointed his chin towards their back yard. "It's good to see you Max."

Max scanned the room and said hi to Parker. He then noticed the other little boy sitting in the chair. He gaped at the two for an explanation.

They filled him in on the events of the past six months and more specifically the events that brought Justus into their lives. He was thrilled to have a new grandson. They all hung out in the kitchen for awhile when eventually, Angela came in the back door and let them know that the performers wanted to start and they were waiting for the guests of honour.

Temperance asked her father to stay, but he said he had to be on his way. His ride was waiting for him, and as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

The family made their way back outside and into the tent that was at the back of their huge back yard.

As they all settled into the tent with their friends, Temperance finally believed that her family was complete. She remembered thinking a long time ago that maybe she was one of those people who didn't get to be in a family...

She had been wrong.

She had never been so happy to be so wrong. She kissed her husband on the cheek and they held their sons waiting for the show to start.

As the first performers started their routine, she leaned over to her husband and whispered in his ear,

"Do you think they need a knife throwing act?"

He smiled at her, and winked.

All was well.

*

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_A/N:_

_So... here ends part two._

_So far I have absolutley no thoughts for a part three, but I won't rule it out. _

_I do have a funny story idea about Jax and Justus in the future, solving crimes for the FBI...how their lives turned out and stuff. Might be entertaining.... watch for it if anyone's interested!!_

_I really do want to thank everyone who has read this story, and reviewed regularly. You all rock! You got me through the tough chapters._

_Thanks again..._

_and peace._

_Gaia_

_XXOO_


End file.
